
THE 
CHILD'S DAY 



WOODS HUTCHINSON 




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Photograph by The Powers Engraving Company 
A GOOD SPORT FOR GIRLS AND BOYS 



THE WOODS HUTCHINSON HEALTH SERIES 



THE CHILD'S DAY 



BY 

WOODS HUTCHINSON, A.M., M.D. 

Sometime Professor of Aiiatomy, University of Iowa; Professor of Com- 
parative Pathology and Methods of Science Teaching, University of 
Buffalo; Lecturer, London Medical Graduates^ College and Uni- 
versity of London; and State Health Officer of Oregon. Author 
of. "Preventable Diseases" " Conquest of Consumption" 
14 Instinct and Health" and "A Handbook of Health" 




HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO 



Revised Edition 






COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY WOODS HUTCHINSON 
Copyright, 1912, by Woods Hutchinson 



ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



Thirteenth Impression 
January, ig20 



7: 



Mi 12 . 



CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
U . S . A 



•CU570310 



FOREWORD 

u If youth only knew, if old age only could!' 9 
lamented the philosopher. What is the use, say 
some, of putting ideas about disease into chil- 
dren's heads and making them fussy about their 
health and anxious before their time? 

Precisely because ideas about disease are far 
less hurtful than disease itself, and because the 
period for richest returns from sensible living is 
childhood — and the earlier the better. 

It is abundantly worth while to teach a child 
how to protect his health and build up his 
strength; too many of us only begin to take 
thought of our health when it is too late to do us 
much good. Almost everything is possible in 
childhood. The heaviest life handicaps can be 
fed and played and trained out of existence in a 
child. Even the most rudimentary knowledge, 
the simplest and crudest of precautions, in child- 
hood may make all the difference between misery 
and happiness, success and failure in life. 

Our greatest asset for healthful living is that 
most of the unspoiled instincts, the primitive likes 
and dislikes, of the child point in the right direc- 



vi FOREWORD 

tion. There is no need to tell children to eat, to 
play, to sleep, to swim; all that is needed is to 
point out why they like to do these things, where 
to stop, what risks to avoid. The simplest and 
most natural method of doing this has seemed to 
be that of a sketch of the usual course and acti- 
vities of a Child's Day, with a running commen- 
tary of explanation, and such outlines of our 
bodily structure and needs as are required to 
make clear why such and such a course is advis- 
able and such another inadvisable. The greatest 
problem has been how to reach and hold the 
interest of the child; and the lion's share of such 
success as may have been achieved in this regard 
is due to the cooperation of my sister, Professor 
Mabel Hutchinson Douglas of Whittier College, 
California. 

The Author. 



CONTENTS 



Good Morning 

I. Waking Up I 

II. A Good Start . 5 

III. Bathing and Brushing 8 

Breakfast 



Going to School 

I. Getting Ready 

II. An Early Romp 

III. Fresh Air — Why We Need It . 

IV. Fresh Air — How We Breathe It 

In School 

I. Bringing the Fresh Air In 
II. Hearing and Listening 

III. Seeing and Reading 

IV. A Drink of Water . 
V. Little Cooks . . . 

VI. Tasting and Smelling 
VII. Talking and Reciting 
VIII. Thinking and Answering 

" Absent To-Day?" 

I. Keeping Well . . . 
II. Some Foes to Fight 
III. Protecting Our Friends 



22 

28 
30 
35 
4i 

48 

54 

58 
68 

77 
84 
89 
92 

100 
106 
119 



viii CONTENTS 

Work and Play 

I. Growing Strong 129 

II. Accidents 137 

III. The City Beautiful 146 

The Evening Meal 156 

A Pleasant Evening 161 

Good Night 

I. Getting Ready for Bed 166 

II. The Land of Nod 173 

Forming Good Habits 177 

Setting-up Exercises 183 

Questions and Exercises i 



THE CHILD'S DAY 

GOOD MORNING 

I. WAKING UP 

If there is anything that we all enjoy, it is 
waking up on a bright spring morning and seeing 
the sunlight pouring into the room. You all 
know the poem beginning, — 

" I remember, I remember 
The house where I was born ; 
The little window where the sun 
Came peeping in at morn." 

You are feeling fresh and rested and happy 
after your good night's sleep and you are 
eager to be up and out among the birds and 
the flowers. 

You are perfectly right in being glad to say 
"Good morning'' to the sun, for he is one of the 
best friends you have. Does n't he make the 
flowers blossom, and the trees grow? And he 
makes the apples redden, too, and the wheat- 
ears fill out, and the potatoes grow under the 
ground, and the peas and beans and melons and 



2 GOOD MORNING 

strawberries and raspberries above it. All these 
things that feed you and keep you healthy are 
grown by the heat of the sun. So if it were not 
for the sunlight we should all starve to death. 

While sunlight is pouring down from the sun 
to the earth, it is warming and cleaning the air, 
burning up any poisonous gases, or germs, that 
may be in it. By heating the air, it starts it 
to rising. If you will watch, you can see the air 
shimmering and rising from an open field on a 
broiling summer day, or wavering and rushing 
upward from a hot stove or an open register in 
winter. Hold a little feather fluff or blow a puff 
of flour above a hot stove, and it will go sailing up 
toward the ceiling. As the heated air rises, the 
cooler air around rushes in to fill the place that 
it has left, and the outdoor " drafts' ' are made 
that we call winds. 

These winds keep the air moving about in all 
directions constantly, like water in a boiling pot, 
and in this way keep it fresh and pure and clean. 
If it were not for this, the air would become foul 
and damp and stagnant, like the water in a ditch 
or marshy pool. So the Sun God, as our ancestors 
in the Far East used to call him thousands of 
years ago, not only gives us our food to eat, but 
keeps the air fit for us to breathe. 



WAKING UP 3 

In still another way the sun is one of our best 
friends; for his rays have the wonderful power, 
not only of causing plants that supply us with 
food — the Green Plants, as we call them — to 
grow and flourish, but at the same time of with- 
ering and killing certain plants that do us harm. 
These plants — the Colorless Plants, we may 
call them — are the molds, the fungi, and the 
bacteria, or germs. You know how a pair of boots 
put away in a dark, damp closet, or left down in 
the cellar, will become covered all over with a 
coating of gray mold. Mold grows rapidly in 
the dark. Just so, these other Colorless Plants, 
which include most of our disease germs, grow 
and flourish in the dark, and are killed by sun- 
light. That is why no house, or room, is fit to 
live in, into which the sunlight does not pour 
freely sometime during the day. The more sun- 
light you can bring into your bedrooms and your 
playrooms and your schoolrooms, except during 
the heat of the day in the summer time, the bet- 
ter they will be. The Italians have a very shrewd 
and true old proverb about houses and light: 
" Where the sunlight never comes, the doctor 
often does." 

So you see that Nature is guiding you in the 
right direction when she makes you love and 



4 GOOD MORNING 

delight in the bright, warm, golden sunlight; 
for it is one of the very best friends that you 
have — indeed, you could n't possibly live with- 
out it. 

In one sense, in fact, though this may be a 
little harder for you to understand, you are sun- 
light yourselves; for the power in your muscles 
and nerves that makes you able to jump and 
dance and sing and laugh and breathe is the sun- 
light which you have eaten in bread and apples 
and potatoes, and which the plants had drunk 
in through their leaves in the long, sunny days of 
spring and summer. 

So throw up your blinds and open your win- 
dows wide to the sunlight every morning; and 
let the sunlight pour in all day long, except only 
w^hile you are reading or studying — when the 
dazzling light may hurt your eyes — and for six 
or seven of the hottest hours of the day in sum- 
mer time. Perhaps your mothers will object that 
the sunlight will fade the carpets, or spoil the 
furniture; but it will put far more color into your 
faces than it will take out of the carpets. If you 
are given the choice of a bedroom, choose a room 
that faces south or southeast or southwest 
never toward the north 



A GOOD START 



II. A GOOD START 

When you are really awake and have had a 
good look to see what kind of morning it is, you 
will feel like yawning and stretching, and rub- 
bing your eyes four or five times, before you 
jump out of bed; and it is a good plan to take 
plenty of time to do this, unless you are already 
late for breakfast or school. It starts your heart 
to beating and your lungs to breathing faster; 
and it limbers your muscles, so that you are ready 
for the harder work they must do as soon as you 
jump out of bed and begin to walk about and 
bathe and dress and run and play. 

When you jump out of bed, throw back the 
covers and turn them over the foot of the bed, so 
that the air and the sunlight can get at every 
part of them and make them clean and fresh and 
sweet to cover you at night again. Though you 
may not know it, all night long, while you have 
been asleep, your skin has been at work cleaning 
and purifying your blood, pouring out gases and 
a watery vapor that we call perspiration, or sweat; 
and these impurities have been caught by the 
sheets and blankets. So after a bed has been 
slept in for four or five nights, if it has not been 



6 GOOD MORNING 

thrown well open in the morning, it begins to 
have a stuffy, foul, sourish smell. You can see 
from this why it is a bad thing to sleep with your 
head under the bedclothes, as people sometimes 
do, or even to pull the blankets up over your 
head, because you are frightened at something or 
are afraid that your ears will get cold. Your 
breath has poisonous gases in it, as well as your 
perspiration; and the two together make the 
air under the bedclothes very bad. 

Now you are ready to wash and dress. But 
before you do this, it is a good thing to take off 
your nightdress, or turn it down to your waist 
and tie it there with the sleeves, and go through 
some good swinging and "windmill" movements 
with your arms and shoulders and back. 

(i) Swing your arms round and round like the 
sails of a windmill; first both together, then one 
in one direction, and the other in the other. 

(2) Hold your arms straight out in front of 
you, and swing them backward until the backs 
of your hands strike behind your back. 

(3) Hold your arms straight out on each side, 
clench your fists, and then smartly bend your 
elbows so that you almost strike yourself on both 
shoulders, and repeat quickly twenty or thirty 
times. 



A GOOD START 





(3) (6) 

STARTING THE DAY 



(4) Swing your arms, out full length, across 
your chest five or ten times. 

(5) Swing forward and down with your arms 
stretched out, until the tips of your fingers 
touch the floor. 

(6) Set your feet a little apart, swing forward 
and downward again, until your hands swing 
back between your ankles. 

When you come back from these down-swings, 
bend just as far back as you can without losing 
your balance, so that you put all the muscles 
along the front of your body on the stretch ; and 
then swing down again between your ankles. 
This will help to tone up all your muscles, and 
limber all your joints, and set your blood to 
circulating well, and give you a good start for 
the day. 



GOOD MORNING 



III. BATHING AND BRUSHING 

Now you are ready to wash and dress. You 
can easily take off the gown, or garments, that 
you have worn during the night ; but there is one 
coat that you cannot take off — one that is more 
important and useful and beautiful than all the 
rest of your clothes put together, no matter of 
how fine material they may be made, or what 
they have cost. 

Do you remember the old Bible story about 
Joseph and his "coat of many colors"? Perhaps 
youVe wished you had one just as nice. Now, 
the fact is, your coat is more beautiful even than 
Joseph's; and, as for its uses, it is the most won- 
derful coat ever made! 

This coat of yours changes its color from time 
to time; sometimes it is pink, sometimes red, 
sometimes a soft milky white, and sometimes a 
dull dark blue, or purple. I wonder if you guess 
what it is. Sometimes it is dry and sometimes 
wet, sometimes it is hot and sometimes cold, 
sometimes rough and sometimes smoother than 
the softest silk — just run your hand gently over 
your cheek! 

Now you have guessed my riddle. This '"won- 



BATHING AND BRUSHING 




derful coat" is your skin, which covers you from 
top to toe. It fits more closely than any glove, 
and yet is so easy and comfortable that it never 
rubs or binds or hurts you in any way. 

Will the wonderful coat wash? Yes, indeed, 
and look all the prettier. In fact, to keep it white 
and clear you must bathe 
often, not only your hands 
and face, but your whole 
body. Your skin is a strain- 
er, you know. It is a "way 
out" for some of the gases 
and waste water from the 
blood. What will happen, 
then, if you don't wash your 
skin? JThe little holes, or 
pores, that the sweat comes 
through may become clogged. The strainer won't 
let the poison out, and so it will stay inside your 
body. Then, too, if you do not wash the skin, the 
little scales that are peeling off the outside coat 
will not be cleared away. You have noticed 
them, have n't you, sometime when you were 
pulling off black stockings? You found little 
white pieces, almost as fine as powder, clinging to 
the inside of the stockings. These little scales 
are always rubbing off from your skin. 



THE SKIN-STRAINER 

The little pores open in fun 
rows of the skin. This draw- 
ing is many hundred times 
as large as the piece of skin 
itself. 



IO GOOD MORNING 

So every morning it is good to splash the cool 
water all over yourself, if you can, as the birds 
do in the puddles. You don't need a bathtub 
for this, though of course it is much pleasanter 
and more convenient if you have one. Pour the 
water into a basin and splash it with your hands 
all over your face, neck, chest, and arms. Then 
rub your skin well with a rough towel. Next, 
place the basin on the floor; put your feet into 
it and dash the water as quickly as you can 
over your legs. Then take another good rub. 
But you must not do this unless you keep warm 
while you are doing it, and your skin must be 
pink when you have finished. If you are chilly 
after rubbing, you should use tepid, even very 
hot, water for your morning bath. In summer 
you can bathe all over easily; but in winter, un- 
less your room is warm, it is enough to splash 
the upper half of your body. Once or twice a 
week you should take a good hot bath with soap 
and then sponge down in cool water. See how 
the birds enjoy their bath; and you will, too, if 
you once get into the habit of bathing regularly. 

Nov/ let us take a good look at this coat and 
see if we can find out what it is like. 

The other day I saw some boys playing basket- 
ball. They wore short sleeves and short trousers. 



BATHING AND BRUSHING II 

Four were Indians, and five were white boys, 
and one was a negro. The skin of the white boys 
seemed to shine, it looked so white; and the 
negro's shone in its blackness; but the Indian's 
looked a dull rich dusky brown. 

Yes, you say, they belong to different races. 

But what causes the difference in their color? 

Little specks of coloring matter, or pigment, 
which lie in the outer layer of the skin. Even 
white skins contain a little pigment, they are 
not a pure white. A Chinaman's skin has a little 
more of this pigment, so that it looks yellow; 
an Indian's has still more; and a negro's has most 
of all, making him black. 

Sunlight can increase the amount of pigment 
in the skin. The people who live in the torrid 
zone have much darker skins than those who live 
where the days are short and cold. You have 
noticed, yourself, that when you expose the skin 
of your face or arms to the hot sun, you become 
freckled, or tanned. This tanning, or browning, 
of the outer layer of the skin protects the more 
delicate coats of skin below from being scorched 
or injured by the strong light. 

When you are playing and running with your 
schoolmates, you see that their faces grow very 
red, and even their hands. Why is this? Because 



12 



GOOD MORNING 



the heart has been pumping hard and has sent 
the red blood out toward the skin. The red 
color shines through the outer 
part of the skin. The pigment 
in the Indian's skin, or the ne- 
gro's, prevents the red blood un- 
derneath from shining through, 
as it does through yours. 

The skin, you see, is made up 
of different layers. When you 
burn yourself, you can see a 
layer of skin stand out like a 
blister. It is white; but if the 
blister is broken, underneath you 
see the coat that is full of tiny 
blood vessels, so tiny and so 
close together that this whole 
coat looks red. The skin, like 
every other part of the body, is 
made up of tiny animal cells. 
In the outer coat they become 
quite flat like little scales and 
then wear off; and their places 
are taken by the newer cells that 
are growing from beneath. The skin grows from 
beneath, and bit by bit it sheds its old outer 
coat. This is how it keeps itself nice and new on 




THE PARTS OF THE 
SKIN 

The pore P on the surface 
of the skin is the end of a 
tube through which sweat 
flows out. At O are the 
oil sacs that feed the hair 
H. At B are the little 
blood vessels that make 
the skin look pink. 



BATHING AND BRUSHING 13 

the outside and "grows away" the marks of 
cuts and burns. 

Now hold up your hand and look across it 
toward the light. What do you see? It looks 
fuzzy, does n't it? Ever and ever so many tiny 
little hairs are on it. The other day a little boy 
asked me what made his skin look so rough, I 
looked, and saw that all the little hairs were 
standing on end, so that his skin looked like 
"goose-flesh." It was because he was cold. The 
muscles at the roots of the hairs had shortened, 
so that they pulled the hairs straight up and 
made the skin look rough. 

What part of the body has a great deal of hair 
on it? The head, of course. Is n't it strange that 
you have such long hair on the top of your head 
and none at all on the soles of your feet or the 
palms of your hands? The. hair on your head 
protects you from cold and rain and the hot sun ; 
but hair on your palms, would only be in the way. 

Now look at the ends of your fingers. There 
the skin has grown so hard that it forms nails. 
If you look at your toes, you will see that the 
same thing has happened there. These nails are 
little pink shells to protect the ends of your 
fingers and toes. You see what a wonderful coat 
it is that you are wearing. 



I4 GOOD MORNING 

Does the skin coat keep you warm? Yes, and 
not only that, but it keeps you cool, too. You 
have often seen little drops of water on your 
skin, when you were very hot. This sweat, or 
perspiration, as we call it, cools the body by 
making the skin moist. You know how cold it 
makes you to be wrapped in a wet sheet. Well, 
the skin cools you in just the same way, when it 
becomes wet with sweat. The sweat comes from 
the blood under the skin; so that, as we saw 
before, by letting this moisture pass through, 
the skin acts as a sieve to let out the waste from 
the blood. 

Then, too, the skin covers and protects all the 
other parts. It is thin where it needs to be thin, 
so as not to interfere with quick movements, as 
on the eyelids and the lips; and thick where it 
needs to be thick, to stand wear and tear, as on 
the soles of the feet and the palms of the hands. 
I remember once taking a sliver of shingle out of 
the back of a little boy who had been sliding down 
a roof. I had to sharpen my knife and press and 
push and at last get a pair of scissors to cut out 
the sliver. It was just like cutting tough leather. 
But even if we do sometimes get cuts and burns 
and bruises, yet our skin coat protects us far more 
than we really think. It keeps out all sorts of 



BATHING AND BRUSHING 



15 



poisons and the germs of blood-poisoning and 
such diseases. These enemies can attack us only 
through a scratch or cut in the skin, for that is the 
only way they can get into the blood. The skin is 




Courtesy, the Perkins Institution and Massachusetts School for the Blind 

READING BY TOUCH INSTEAD OF SIGHT 

These boys are blind; their books are printed with raised letters, which they read 
by feeling of them. 

better than any manufactured coat, too, because, 
if it is torn or scratched, it can mend itself. 

Does your skin ever talk to you? No, of course 
not; yet it tells you ever so many things. Shut 
your eyes and pick up a pencil. As you touch it, 
your skin tells you that it is round and smooth, 
and pointed at one end. You can feel the soft 
rubber on the other end, too. Is it wet? No. Is 
it hot? Of course not. Now place a book in the 



16 GOOD MORNING 

palm of your hand. Is it flat or round, light or 
heavy, rough or smooth? All these things your 
skin tells you through little nerve tips, which are 
scattered thickly all over it. Still another thing 
the skin does; if you touch anything sharp or hot, 
it says at once that it hurts. If your clothes are 
tight or uncomfortable, the skin soon lets you 
know. You see it is always on the lookout, 
always ready to tell you about the things around 
you and to warn you against the things that 
might hurt you. The fifth of your " Five Senses," 
the sense of touch, is in your skin. 

There are some parts of your skin-coat that 
should have special care. 

I hardly need tell you about washing your 
face carefully around your nose and in front of 
your ears. Sometimes I have seen a "high-water 
mark" right down the middle of the cheek or 
just under the jaws or chin. 

Of course your mother has told you about 
washing your hands! You see, our hands touch 
so many dirty things, and handle so many things 
that other people's hands have touched, that we 
ought always to wash them before a meal for 
fear some of the dirt or germs on them may get 
into our mouths and cause disease. 

And we really need to clean our nails as often 



BATHING AND BRUSHING 



17 



as we wash our hands, for that little black rim 
under the nail is very dangerous. Dust and dis- 
ease germs and dirt of all kinds find it a good 
place in which to hide. Trim your nails with a 
file, not a knife; and clean them with a dull 
cleaner, for a sharp-pointed one will scrape the 
nail and roughen it, or push the nail away from 
the skin of the finger underneath. 

Trim and clean the edges of your nails care- 
fully and thoroughly, but don't fuss much with 
the roots of them. That _ 
little fold of skin there 
may strike you as untidy, 
but it covers the soft grow- 
ing part of the nail; and 
if you push it back with a 
nail-cleaner, it may cause 
the nail to crack and rough- 
en or become inflamed and 
start a ' ' hang nail ' f or " run 
■around." If you push it back at all, do so only 
with the ball of your thumb or finger. 

The edges of the nails should be trimmed in a 
curve to match the curve of the end of the finger. 
Of course you know that you should never bite 
your nails, not only because it is a bad habit and 
will bring a good deal of dirt into your mouth, 





USEFUL TOOLS 



18 



GOOD MORNING 



but because you may bite, or tear down into,, 
the tender growing part of the nail, sometimes 
called the quick; and then this part may become 

inflamed, and you will have 
a troublesome sore on the 
end of your finger. 

Just as your nails are a 
part of your skin, — hard- 
ened from it and rooted 
in it, — so, too, are your 
teeth; and, like the rest 
of the skin, they should 
be kept thoroughly clean. 
Every morning and even- 
ing at least they should be 
carefully brushed. If you 
take good care of your first teeth and have them 
filled when they need it, you will probably have 
good permanent teeth, and you won't have to 
suffer with toothache. 

The skin of your head, which grows such 
beautiful hair, and the hair itself, should be kept 
clean. There are two things needed for this. 

First, the hair should be brushed and combed 
night and morning. The skin of your scalp is 
shedding tiny thin scales all day and all night, 
just as the rest of your skin is doing. Fortun- 




DO YOUR NAILS LOOK LIKE 
THESE ? 



BATHING AND BRUSHING 19 

ately, your hair is growing from roots under the 
skin much in the same way as blades of grass 
grow from their roots; and, as it grows, it pushes 
up these scales from the surface of the scalp to 
where you can readily reach them with a good 
bristle brush. If they are not well brushed out, 
'the dust and smoke from the air will mix with 
them, and the germs in the dust and smoke will 
breed in the mixture, and you will soon have 
" scurf ' or dandruff on your head. So give at 
least fifteen or twenty strokes with the brush 
before you use the comb. It is n't necessary to 
brush or scrape the scalp, and a comb should be 
used only to part the hair or take out the tan- 
gles. 

The second thing is to wash the hair and the 
scalp. Boys ought to wash their hair every week; 
and girls, every two wxeks; and girls, especially, 
should be careful to dry their hair very thor- 
oughly afterwards. You will notice after wash- 
ing your hair that it feels dry and fluffy, and some- 
times rather harsh. This is because the soap 
and hot water together have washed out of the 
hair its natural oil, or grease, which kept it bright 
and soft ; and this is why it is better not to wash 
the hair with soap and hot water oftener than 
once a week or so. But it should n't be shirked 



20 



GOOD MORNING 



when the time does come. Watch how hard your 
kitten works to keep her fur coat glossy, though 
it must be tiresome enough to lick, lick, lick. 

Sometimes in cold weather your lips and 
knuckles crack and bleed. That is because the 
skin on those parts is so thin and so often 
stretched and bruised. If you will take a little 
pure olive oil or cold cream and rub it on your 
lips and hands, it will make the skin softer and 
not so likely to break. 

Sometimes your feet tell you that they need 
better care. Perhaps your shoes are too tight, or 

too loose and rub 
your toes. Soon 
the skin becomes 
very hard in one 
spot, and you have 




SHOES THAT SHOW SENSE 
Low heels and plenty of room for the toes. 



a corn on your 
toe. You must be 
very, very careful how your shoes and stockings 
fit. If you should find a corn, or the beginning 
of one, you had better tell your mother about it, 
and let her see that your stockings are not too 
big, so that they wrinkle into folds and chafe, or 
that your shoes are mended, or that you have a 
larger pair. And then, if you wash your feet in 
cold water every day, and put some vaseline or 



BATHING AND BRUSHING 21 

sweet oil on the hard spot night or morning, the 
corn will probably go away. 

Not only your shoes, but all of your clothing 
must be comfortable if your skin and the parts 
under it are to do their work well. Your clothes 
as well as your skin must be washed often, be- 
cause the sweat, which is oily and greasy as well 
as watery, soaks into them, and the little white 
scales cling to them, and often dust and disease 
germs, too. 

One winter a little boy came to my school. 
The other children told me they did not like to 
sit by him, his clothes had such an unpleasant 
smell, I talked to him about it, and what do you 
suppose he said! "Why, I can't bathe; the creek's 
too cold in winter/ ' He was waiting till summer 
time to take a bath ! No wonder the other child- 
ren did not like to sit near him. 

Yet, with all the bathing and rubbing and 
brushing, your skin won't be clean and beautiful 
and able to do all that it has to do, unless your 
stomach and heart and lungs are in good working 
order. So you must eat good food, sleep ten or 
twelve hours a day, and play out of doors a great 
deal, if you expect your skin to be healthy. 



BREAKFAST 

When you are washed, it does n't take you 
long to dress ; and before you have finished brush- 
ing your hair, you begin to feel as if you were 
ready for breakfast. You know just where the 
feeling is — an empty sensation near the pit of 
your stomach, and you don't have to look at the 
clock to know that it is breakfast time. 

About this time something begins to smell very 
good downstairs; and down you go, two steps at 
a time, and out into the dining-room, or kitchen. 
You could do it with your eyes shut, just follow- 
ing your nose; and it is a pretty good guide to 
follow, too. If you will just go toward the things 
that smell good, and keep away from, or refuse 
to eat, those that smell bad, you will avoid a 
great many dangers, not only to your stomach, 
but to your general health ; for a bad smell is one 
of Nature's " black marks," and you know what 
they are. 

How nice and fresh and appetizing everything 
looks — the white cloth, the clean cups and 
saucers, and the shining spoons and forks. You 
are sure that a good breakfast is one of the best 



BREAKFAST 



23 



things in the world. You sit down and begin to 
eat, and everything tastes as good as it looks. 

A good breakfast would be an egg, or a slice 
of bacon or ham, with a glass of milk, — or two, 
if you can drink an- 
other, — and two or J I J 

three slices of bread, 
or toast, with plenty 
of butter; and then 
some cereal with plen- 
ty of cream and sugar, 
or some fruit, to fin- 
ish with. A breakfast 
like this will give you 
just about the right 
amount of strength milk and sunlight don't agree 

for the 
work 

with a cereal or breakfast food ; for this will spoil 
your appetite for your real breakfast. Cereal has 
very little nourishment in proportion to its bulk 
and the way it " fills you up." Bread or mush or 
potato alone is not enough. Any one of these 
gives you fuel, to be sure; but it gives you very 
little with which to build up your body. For that 
you must have milk or meat or eggs or fish. 
It is most important that children should eat 




The early riser can help a great deal by tak- 
mOrnmg S i ng the milk bottles in out of the sun. Milk 
-,->. , •■ • spoils quickly if it is not kept cool. 

Don t begin 



24 BREAKFAST 

a good big breakfast. All the hundred-and-one 
things that you are going to do during the day 
— racing, jumping, shouting, studying — require 
strength to do ; and that strength can be got only 
out of the power in your food, which is really, you 
remember, the sunlight stored up in it. 

Sometimes, when you come down in the morn- 
ing, especially if you have n't had the windows of 
your bedroom well open so as to get plenty of air 
during the night, you may feel that you are not 
very hungry for breakfast. Or perhaps, if you 
have risen late, or are in a great hurry to get to 
school in time, you just swallow a cup of coffee 
or tea, and a cracker or a little piece of bread, or 
a small saucer of cereal. This is a very bad thing 
to do, because coffee and tea, while they make you 
feel warm and comfortable inside, have very little 
"strength," or food value, in them, and simply 
warm you up and stir up your nerves without 
doing you any real good at all. A cracker or a 
single piece of bread or one large saucer of cereal 
has only about one fourth of the strength in it 
that you will need for playing or studying until 
noontime. So after you have started to school 
with a breakfast like this, about the middle of the 
morning you begin to feel tired and empty and 
cross, and wonder what is the matter with yourself- 



BREAKFAST 25 

Children of your age are growing so fast that 
they need plenty of good, wholesome food. They 
get so hungry that they want to be eating all the 
time. For " grown-ups" three times a day is 
enough; but for you children, whose bodies use 
up the food so fast, it is well to take also a piece 
of bread and butter, or two or three cookies, or a 
glass of milk with some crackers, in the middle 
of the morning and again about the middle of the 
afternoon. It will not hurt your appetite for 
dinner or supper, and you won't be wanting to 
"pick" at cake and candy and pickles all day 
long. 

How does eating keep you alive and make you 
grow? Eating is somewhat like mending a fire. 
You put wood or coal on the fire, and it keeps 
burning and giving out heat; but if you do not 
put fresh fuel on, the fire soon goes out. Just so, 
putting food into your body feeds the "body 
fires" and keeps you warm, and at the same time 
makes you grow. Of course the "body fires" are 
not just like those you see burning in the stove: 
there are no flames. But there is burning going 
on, just the same. 

The food you put into your body must be 
made soft and pulpy before it can burn in your 
muscles. Now you can guess what your teeth are 



26 



BREAKFAST 



for. They chop, crush, and grind the food ; and the 
tongue rolls it over and over and mixes it with 
the moisture in your mouth, until it is almost 

like very thick soup . 
Then you make a 
little motion with 
your tongue and 
throat, and down 
it goes. 

Wheredoesitgo? 
It is passed down 
a tube that we call 
the food tube. While 
I tell you about it, 
you can look at 
the picture and 
then try to draw it 
yourself. 

The food goes 
quickly down the 
first part of the 
tube until it comes 
to a part much 
larger than the rest, 
which we call the stomach. Here it is churned 
about for a long time, and the meat you have 
eaten is melted, or dissolved. Then the food goes 




THE FOOD TUBE 

Note the arrows. This is the trip made by every 
mouthful of food. 



BREAKFAST 27 

on into the next part of the tube, which has be- 
come narrow again. This lower part, which is 
about twenty-five feet long, is coiled up just below 
the waist, between the large bones that you can 
feel on each side of your body. These coils of 
the food tube, we call the bowels. - 

Winding all around the stomach and bowels 
are tiny branching pipes full of blood. They 
look somewhat like the creepers on ivy, or the 
tendrils on grapevines. These suck out the melted 
food from the bowels. They take what the body 
can use, and carry it away in the blood to all 
parts of the body. This is the fuel that keeps 
the "body fires' ' going. The tougher parts of 
the food, which the body cannot use, are carried 
down to the lower end of the bowels and pushed 
out by strong muscles. 

This waste should be passed out from the body 
once every day and at the same time each day. 
In the morning after breakfast is perhaps the 
best time. If you do not get rid of it every day, 
it makes poisons, which go into your blood and 
soon make you very sick indeed. You must 
keep clean inside as well as outside. 



GOING TO SCHOOL 

I. GETTING READY 

As soon as you have finished breakfast, and 
brushed your teeth and gone to the toilet, you 
are ready to run out of doors to play, if you have 
plenty of time, or, if not, to start for school. 

Doesn't it seem a nuisance, in winter time, 
to have to put on a coat and overshoes and a cap 
or a hood, and sometimes leggings and mittens, 
too? But your mothers know what is best for 
you; and when you are young and growing fast, 
you have so much more surface in proportion 
to your weight than when you are grown up, 
that you lose heat from the blood in your skin 
very fast; and unless you are warmly dressed, 
you become chilled. 

When you are chilled, you are using up, in 
merely trying to keep yourself warm, some of 
the energy that ought to be used for growing and 
for working. It has been found out by careful 
tests that children who are not warmly dressed, 
and particularly whose arms and legs are not 
warmly covered, do not grow so fast as they 
ought to, and more easily catch colds and other 



GETTING READY 29 

infections. So take time to put on your cap and 
your coat, if the weather is cold; and, if it is 
snowy, to button on leggings over your stockings; 
and then you can play as hard as you like, and 
run through the snow, and keep warm and rosy 
and comfortable. 

Wool is one of the best stuffs for coats and 
dresses and stockings and gloves and caps, not 
only because it is warm, but also because it is 
lighter in weight than anything else you could 
wear that would be equally warm, and because 
it is porous; that is, it will let the air pass through 
it, and the perspiration from the body escape 
through it. 

Don't wear any clothes so tight that you can- 
not run and jump and play and fling your arms 
and legs about freely, or so fine and stylish that 
you are afraid of getting them soiled by romping 
and tumbling. 

It is best to wear fairly heavy, comfortable 
shoes with good thick soles; then you will not 
have to wear rubbers, except when it is actually 
pouring rain, or when there is melting snow or 
slush upon the ground. Felt, or buckskin, or 
heavy cloth makes very good " uppers" for chil- 
dren's shoes; but only leather makes good 
soles. 



3 o GOING TO SCHOOL 

It is best not to wear rubbers too much, be- 
cause the same waterproofness, which keeps the 
rain and the snow out, keeps the perspiration of 
your feet in, and is likely to make them damp. 
When they are damp, they are as easily chilled 
as if they had been wet through with rain or 
puddle water. Always take off your rubbers in 
the house or in school, because they are holding 
in not only the water of perspiration, but the 
poisons as well ; and these will poison your entire 
blood, so that you soon have a headache and feel 
generally uncomfortable. 

II. AN EARLY ROMP 

The minute you are outside the door, the fresh 
morning air strikes your face, and you draw four 
or five big breaths, as if you would like to fill 
yourself as full as you could hold. If you have 
had a good night's sleep and a good breakfast, 
the very feel of the outdoor air will make you 
want to run and jump and shout and throw your 
arms about. This warms you up finely and gives 
you a good color; but if you keep it up long, you 
will notice that two things are happening: one, 
that you are breathing faster than you were 
before; the other, that your heart is beating 
harder and faster, so that you can almost feel it 



AN EARLY ROMP 



3i 



throbbing without putting your hand on your 
chest. 

If you run too hard, or too far, you begin to 
be out of breath, and your heart thumps so hard 
that it almost hurts. What is your heart doing? 
It is pumping; it is trying to pump the blood fast 




AN EARLY RUN IS A GOOD PREPARATION FOR THE DAY'S WORK 

out to your muscles to give them the strength 
to run with. 

Of course you have seen a pump? Perhaps 
some of you have to pump water every day at 
home. You take the handle in your hands, lift it 
up, then press it down, and out pours the water 
through the spout; and, as you keep pumping, 
the water spurts out every time you press the 



32 



GOING TO SCHOOL 



handle down. It is hard work, and your arms are 
soon tired; but, as you cannot drink the water 
while it is down in the well, you must pump to 
bring it up where you can reach it. 

Just so the heart pumps to keep the blood 
flowing round and round, through the muscles 
and all over the body. If you put your finger on 
your wrist, or on the side of your neck, you can 

feel a little throb, 
or pulse, for every 
spurt from your 
heart - pump; and 
that means for every 
heart-beat. 

This heart-pump is 
made of muscle, and 
is about the size of 
your clenched fist. 
And just as you can 
squeeze water from 
a sponge or out of 
a bulb - syringe, by 
opening and shutting your hand around it, so the 
big heart muscle squeezes the blood out of the 
heart. It squeezes it out from one side of the 
heart; and then, when it lets go, the blood comes 
rushing in from the other side to fill the heart 




THE HEART-PUMP 

The big tubes are the arteries and veins. 



AN EARLY ROMP 33 

again- So the heart goes on squeezing out and 
sucking in the blood, all day and all night as 
long as we live. 

When the blood comes to the muscles, it is a 
beautiful bright red; but after the muscles have 
taken what they want of it for food to burn, 
and warm you up, the " ashes' ' and the " smoke' ' 
go back into the blood and dirty its color from 
red to purple. Then the blood is carried to the 
lungs, where the fresh air you breathe in blows 
away the " smoke' ' and makes the blood red 
again. 

The blood is pumped all over the body through 
tubes or pipes, called blood vessels. Those that 
carry the red blood out from the heart, we call 
arteries. They are deep down under the skin, 
and we cannot see them. The pipes that carry 
the purple blood from the muscles and other 
parts back to the heart again, we call veins; and 
some of these are so close to the surface that we 
can easily see them through the skin. Let your 
hand hang down a minute or two, then you can 
see the veins on the inside of your wrist, or on 
the back of your hand, if it is not too fat. 

The muscles, the brain, the skin, and other 
parts of the body get liquid food from the blood 
by "sucking" it through the walls of the small- 



FRESH AIR — WHY WE NEED IT 35 

est of the blood vessels, for these walls are very 
thin. In the same way, when waste passes from 
the muscles or the skin into the blood, it, too, 
soaks through the thin walls of the tiniest blood 
tubes, called capillaries. 

Your heart beats or throbs about seventy-five 
times in a minute when you are well. Look at 
the second hand of a watch, while you count the 
beats in your wrist or in your neck. 

Does your heart ever become tired? Not 
while you keep well, unless you over-drive it by 
running or wrestling too hard. It can rest be- 
tween the beats. But the heart muscle, like any 
other muscle, must have plenty of good red 
blood to feed on. You put food into the blood 
by eating good breakfasts and dinners. The more 
you run and jump and play, the more work the 
heart has to do and the stronger it grows ; and a 
good morning romp before school will send the 
blood flowing so merrily round from top to toe 
that you will feel fresher and brighter all the day. 

III. FRESH AIR — WHY WE NEED IT 

The heart is not the only thing that goes 
faster and harder when you run about in the 
morning and play hard. You are breathing 
faster and deeper as well, as if there were some- 



36 GOING TO SCHOOL 

thing in the air outside that you needed in your 
body as much as food. 

But, of course, you know that air is not good 
to eat. It has no strength in it, as food has; it 
is n't even a liquid like milk or coffee or tea. It 
is so thin and light that we call it a gas. Indeed, 
I suppose it is pretty hard for you to believe that 
air is a real thing at all. But all outdoors is full of 
the gas called air, and everything that seems to be 
empty, like a room or an empty box, is full of it. 

You cannot even smell it, as you can that other 
gas which comes through pipes into our houses 
and burns at the gas jets; nor can you see it like 
the gas that comes out of a boiling kettle or from 
the whistle of a locomotive, and which we call 
steam. This is simply because air is so pure that 
it has no smell, and is so perfectly clear that we 
can see right through it. Almost the only way 
that we can recognize it is by feeling it when it is 
moving. But it is a very real thing for all that; 
and, like sunshine and food, is one of the most 
important things in the world for us. 

What is it that air does in the body? We must 
need it very much, for we die quickly when we 
cannot get it: it takes us only about three 
minutes to suffocate, or choke to death, if we 
can't get it. 



FRESH AIR — WHY WE NEED IT 37 

You remember that the blood is pumped out 
from the heart, all through the body. Every- 
where it goes, — to the feet and the hands and 
the head, — it is carrying two things: food that 
it has sucked up from the food tube, and hun- 
dreds and hundreds of tiny red sponges called red 
corpuscles. These little sponges are full of air 
which they sucked up as the blood passed 
through the lungs. When we stop breathing, — 
that is, taking in air, — the little red sponges of 
course can't get any air to carry to the different 
parts of the body. 

The body is made up of millions of tiny, tiny 
animals, called cells, — so tiny that they can be 
seen only under a microscope. Each of these 
cells must have food and air, just like any other 
animal. They eat the food the blood brings to 
them, and they take the air from the red cor- 
puscles in the blood. With the air as a " draft," 
they burn up the waste scraps, as we burn scraps 
from the kitchen, in the back of the stove. 

Suppose you light a candle and place it under a 
glass jar and watch what will happen. The flame 
will become weaker and weaker, and at last it will 
quite go out. You might think at first that the 
wind blew it out; but how could the wind get 
through or under the jar? No, the glass keeps all 



38 GOING TO SCHOOL 

the outside air away from the flame; and that is 
just the reason why it does go out. Unless it has 
fresh air, it cannot burn. There is something — 
a gas — in the air that makes the flame burn, and 
when it has used up all this gas inside the glass, 
and can't get any more, it stops burning. 

Now you will want to know what this gas in 
the air is. When we write about it, we use its 
nickname, the large capital letter 0; but its 
whole name is Oxygen. 

Just as the candle flame must have oxygen to 
keep it burning, so our cells must have oxygen 
to burn their impurities, or waste; and if they 
don't get the oxygen, and can't burn their im- 
purities, they are poisoned by them and "go 
out," or die. 

You can see the flame when the candle is burn- 
ing, but you can't see the fires that burn in our 
bodies; there are no real flames at all. I know it 
is hard for you to believe that there can be any 
burning when our bodies are so wet and damp. 
But if you can't see it, you can easily feel it. 
Blow on your hand. How warm your breath is! 
Touch your hand to your cheek. It is quite 
warm, too. If you run or play hard, you some- 
times become so hot that you want to take off 
your coat. That is because your fires are burn- 



FRESH AIR — WHY WE NEED IT 39 

ing faster. The muscles are using more food and 
making more scraps to be burned. You breathe 
faster and faster till at last you are "out of 
breath' ' and feel as if you would smother or 
choke. The blood has hard work to bring oxygen 
enough to keep the fires going. 

After the cells have burned the food scraps, 
they turn the ■" ashes' ' and " smoke' ' back into 
the blood-stream that is always flowing past 
them. If the cells did not do this, they would 
soon smother to death, just as you could not 
possibly live in a house without chimneys to 
carry off the smoke. And, of course, the blood 
wants to get rid of this waste just as quickly as 
possible. 

Part of the waste in the body is liquid, like 
water, and can flow away through the blood 
pipes without needing to be burned. Some of 
this watery waste comes out through the skin 
and stands in beads or drops upon it. That is 
the part we call perspiration, or sweat. The rest 
of it goes in the blood to another strainer called 
the kidneys, passes through this as urine, and is 
carried away from the body as the waste water 
from the bathtub and the sink is carried away 
from a house. 

For the "smoke" Mother Nature has still 



4 o GOING TO SCHOOL 

another beautiful plan. She sends the blood- 
stream flowing through the lungs, where it can 
send off its " smoke' ' and then get fresh air to 
carry to the cells in the muscles. When you 
breathe out, you are sending out the "smoke"; 
and when you breathe in, you are taking in fresh 
air. 

Our body "smoke" is not brown or blue, like 
the smoke from a fire; it is a clear, odorless gas, 
called carbon dioxid. This is the same gas that 
makes the choke-damp of coal mines, which 
suffocates the miners if the mine is not well ven- 
tilated ; and the same gas that sometimes gathers 
at the bottom of a well, making it dangerous for 
anyone to go down into the well to clean it. And 
this gas is poisonous in our bodies just as it is in 
the mine or the well. 

You see, then, how important it is that we 
should live much of our lives in the clear pure 
air out of doors, and should bring the fresh air 
into our houses and schools and shops. "Fill up " 
with it all you can on your way to school, for the 
best of air indoors is never half so good as the 
free-blow T ing breezes outside. 



FRESH AIR — HOW WE BREATHE IT 41 



IV. FRESH AIR — HOW WE BREATHE IT 

When you are running and breathing hard, 
and even when you are sitting still and breathing 
quietly, air is going into your lungs and then 
coming out, going in and coming out, many 
times every minute. How does the air get in and 
out of the lungs? It will not run in of itself; for 
it is light and floats 
about, you know. Here, 
again, Mother Nature 
has planned it all out. 
She has made us an air 
bellows, or air pump, 
to suck it into the 
lungs. First we'll see 
what shape this pump 
is, and then how it 
works. 

Stiff rings of bone 
called ribs run round 
your body, just like the 
hoops in an old hoop 
skirt, or like the metal 
rings round a barrel. 
Here is a picture of the bones of the chest. Per- 
haps your teacher can show you the skeleton 




THE CHEST THAT HOLDS THE 
LUNGS 

Back of the lungs is the heart; its position 
is shown by the broken line. The black 
line across the chest shows how high the 
diaphragm rises when we breathe out 
quietly. 



42 GOING TO SCHOOL 

of some animal. You will notice how the rings, 
or ribs, slant and are joined by hinges behind to 
the backbone and in front to the breastbone. It 
looks somewhat like a cage, does n't it? Put your 
hands on the sides of your chest and you can feel 
your own ribs. Do they slant upward or down- 
ward? 

This chest-cage is our breathing-machine. Be- 
fore I tell you how it pumps, I want you to get a 
pair of bellows and see how they work. When 
you lift up the handle of the bellows, you make 
the bag of the bellows larger so that it sucks in 
air; and when you press the handle down again, 
the air puffs out through the nozzle. 

Our air machine, though it is somewhat dif- 
ferent from the bellows in shape, works in exactly 
the same way. You remember that you found 
that the ribs slant down and can be moved on 
hinges. Suppose, now, you place your hands 
against your ribs and feel the ribs lift as you 
draw in a long breath. The air will be sucked 
into your nose just as it was into the bellows 
when you raised the handle. By lifting your 
ribs, you have made the chest-cage larger; and 
the air has rushed into your nose, down your 
windpipe, and filled your lungs. If you breathe 
very deeply, you will find that your stomach, too, 



FRESH AIR — HOW WE BREATHE IT 43 

swells out. This shows that the muscular bottom 
of the cage, called the diaphragm, has been pulled 
down, making the cage larger still. 

In this chest-cage are millions of tiny air bags 
that make up the lungs; and every time you 
take a breath, the air bags are puffed out with 
the fresh air that comes rushing in. By the time 
you let your ribs sink again, the air has given its 
oxygen to the blood, and the blood has poured 
its carbon-dioxid smoke into the air bags for you 
to breathe out. Nature, with the same bellows, 
pumps in the oxygen and pumps out the " smoke.' ' 

Now, we breathe into our lung-bellows what- 
ever air happens to be around us. So we should 
take care that the air around us is fresh air. 

Unless the air were kept in motion by the heat 
of the sun, causing breezes and winds, it would 
become stale and would n't do at all for our lung- 
bellows to use. The air we breathe must be kept 
moving and fresh if it is to make us feel bright 
and strong and happy. Mother Nature has given 
us miles upon miles and oceans upon oceans of 
this clear, fresh air to breathe — "all outdoors/ ' 
in fact, as far as we can see around us and for 
miles above our heads. She sends the winds to 
move the air about and blow away the dust and 
dirt; and the sunshine, you remember, not only 



44 GOING TO SCHOOL 

to warm the air and keep it moving, but to burn 
right through it and kill the poisons. But this 
brings us to something else. 

You have learned that the air we breathe out 
would soon smother us, just as smoke would; 
and now we will see why. If you blow against 
the window pane on a cold day, the glass is no 
longer clear; and w r hen you look at it closely, 
you see that it is covered w r ith tiny drops of 
water. This is part of the breath you have just 
blown out. If the room is cold enough, you can 
see your breath in the air; that is, the steam in 
your breath becomes cold and appears as tiny 
water-drops. You have seen how in the same 
way, the steam, an inch or so from the spout 
of the teakettle, cools, making little water- 
drops that float in the air like clouds. Part of 
the breath, then, is water; but most of it is a gas, 
and you can't see it at all as it floats away into 
the air about you. 

If your teacher has a glass of limewater, and 
will let you breathe into it through a tube, you 
will see that your breath soon makes the water 
look milky. This shows that the gas in your 
breath is not like the air about you ; because air 
was all over the top of the limewater, yet did 
not change it at all. The milky look is caused 



FRESH AIR — HOW WE BREATHE IT 45 

by carbon dioxid, one of the poisons in your 
breath. 

When some people come close to you, you 
want to turn away your head, because you do 
not like the smell of their breath. Even when one 
is quite well, the breath has a queer " mousey' ' 
odor, so that we never like to breathe the breath 
of another person. This dis- 
agreeable odor comes not only 
from the lungs but from the 
teeth. 

We are always breathing out 
poisons into the air. One of 
these you can see in the milky 
limewater, and others you can 

J PROVING THAT THE 

smell when you happen to come breath is not like 

THE AIR 

close to anyone felse. 

If you blow on your fingers, you feel that your 
breath is much warmer than the air. If people 
are crowded together in rooms with doors and 
windows shut, their breath soon heats and 
poisons the air, until they begin to have head- 
ache, and to, feel dull and drowsy and uncomfort- 
able. If they should be shut in too long, without 
any opening to let in the fresh air, as in a prison 
cell, or in the hold of a ship during a storm, the 
air would become so poisonous as to make them 




46 



GOING TO SCHOOL 



ill, and would even suffocate them and kill them 
outright. Even the bees found this out thousands 
of years ago; and in their hives in hot weather 
they station lines of worker-bees, one just behind 
another from the door right down each of the 
main passages, whose business it is to do nothing 
but keep their wings whirring rapidly, so that 
they fan a steady current of fresh air into every 
part of the hive. 





Breathing dust. Catching the dust in a cloth, 

DUSTING— HOW SHALL WE DO IT? 

How does Mother Nature get rid of these 
poisons from our breath? Of course, you say, 
"She uses the wind and the sunshine." Yes, the 
winds can whisk up the poison and blow it away 
so fast, and the sunshine can burn up the horrid 



FRESH AIR — HOW WE BREATHE IT 47 

smell so quickly, that even the air above big 
cities, and in their streets, is quite clean enough 
for us to breathe, except where the people are 
very closely crowded together and very dirty. 
Mother Nature wants all of us to help in keeping 
the air clean. This we can do by keeping our- 
selves and our houses clean, and by being careful 
not to leave scraps of waste, or dirty things, in 
the streets and cars and parks and other public 
places. And you children ought to be very care- 
ful about your school yard and the halls and the 
classrooms, where you spend so much of your 
time. 



IN SCHOOL 

I. BRINGING THE FRESH AIR IN 

The only place where air is absolutely sure to 
be fresh is out of doors. There, as we have seen, 
the sun and the winds keep it so all the time. 
But, unluckily, we cannot spend all our time 
outdoors, either when we are little or after we 
have grown up. So we must try in every way 
that we can to bring the outdoors indoors — to 
get plenty of fresh air and light into the houses 
that we live in, especially the bedrooms we sleep 
in and the schoolrooms we study in when we are 
children, and the offices or shops we work in 
when we are grown up. 

After you have your lungs and your blood well 
filled with air, either by walking briskly to school 
or by chasing one another about the school play- 
ground, you will suddenly hear the bell ring, and 
you march indoors and sit down at your desks. 
Here, of course, the air cannot blow about freely 
from every direction, because the walls and 
doors and windows are shutting you in on every 
side. The room, to be sure, is full of air; but if the 
doors and windows are shut, this air has no way 



BRINGING THE FRESH AIR IN 



49 



of getting outside, nor can the fresh, pure air out 
of doors — even though it be moving quite fast, 
as a wind or a breeze — get inside. 

We must let the fresh air come in and the stale 
air go out. This is one of the things that windows 




Courtesy, Bureau of Education, Department of the Interior 
A CLASSROOM ALMOST AS GOOD AS THE OUT-OF-DOORS 

Notice the windows open top and bottom, and the high windows under the roof. 
Why are these good ? 

are for; and this is why they are hung upon pul- 
leys and made to slide up and down easily. Of 
course, even when the windows are not open, 
they are letting in light, which, you remember, 
is a deadly enemy to germs and poisons. 



5 o IN SCHOOL 

Bright sunlight is best for purifying the air of 
a room, but even ordinary daylight has a good 
deal of germ-killing power. Therefore, a room 
that is well lighted is not only much pleasanter 
to live in, but much healthier, than one that is 
dull and gloomy. You see why we need plenty 
of windows and doors : we must let in the breezes 
and the sunshine, and let out the 
poisons and the dirt. Then, too, 
we must make the air in the 
building move about in order 
to keep it fresh ; for if the air is 
not fresh, we soon grow tired 
and sleepy and have headaches. 
That is why your teacher keeps 
the windows open at the top a 
foot or so. You can easily see 
that when there are twenty or 
thirty of you breathing out 
poisons, and each one of you needing about four 
bushels of fresh air every minute, the old air 
ought to be going out and the fresh air coming in 
all the time. 

That is also why your teacher gives you a 
recess, so that you can run out of doors and get 
some fresh air. Then she can throw open all the 
windows and doors and have the air in the room 




VENTILATION 

Watch the candle flames, 
Which way is the air mov- 
ing, and why ? 



BRINGING THE FRESH AIR IN 51 

clean and fresh when you come back again. So 
when recess comes, don't hang about in the hall- 
ways or on the stairs or in the basement, but run 
right out of doors into the playground and shout 
and throw your arms about and run races to fill 
your lungs full of fresh, sweet air and stretch all 
your muscles, after the confinement and sitting 
still. Don't saunter about and whisper secrets 
or tell stories, but get up some lively game that 
does n't take long to play, such as tag or steal- 
sticks or soak-ball, or duck-on-a-rock or skipping 
or hopscotch. These will blow all the " smoke" 
out of your lungs and send the hot blood flying 
all over your body and make you as "fresh as a 
daisy" for your next lesson. 

When you come back into the schoolroom after 
recess, the air will seem quite fresh and pure; but 
unless you keep the windows open, it will not 
be long before your head begins to be hot, and 
your eyes heavy, and you feel like yawning and 
stretching, and begin to wonder why the lessons 
are so long and tiresome. Then, if your teacher 
will throw open all the windows and have you 
stand up, or, better still, march around the room 
singing or go through some drill or calisthenic 
exercises, you will soon feel quite fresh and rested 
again. 



52 IN SCHOOL 

In the mild weather of the spring or early fall, 
all you need to do to keep the air fresh in the 
schoolroom is to keep the windows well open at 
the top. But in the winter, the air outdoors is so 
cold that it has to be heated before it is brought 
in; and this, in any modern and properly built 
schoolhouse, is usually arranged for. The fresh 
air is drawn in through an opening in the base- 
ment and is either heated, so that it rises, or is 
blown by fans all over the building. Sometimes 
these fans are made in such a way that they will 
not work well if the windows are open. But 
sometimes the fans may not work well anyway, 
and then your teacher takes care to have the 
windows opened, so that the air may never be 
"stuffy " or make you feel dull or uncomfortable. 

Sometimes this may mean a little draft, or 
current of uncomfortably cool air, for one or two 
of you who sit nearest the windows; but your 
teacher will always allow you to change your 
seat if this proves very unpleasant. If you have 
plenty of warmth in the room you sit in, unless 
the air outside is very cold, this " breeze" won't 
do you any harm at all ; on the contrary, it will 
be good for you. Instead of catching cold from 
a draft like this, it is from foul, stuffy, poison- 
ous air, loaded with other people's breaths and 



BRINGING THE FRESH AIR IN 53 

the germs contained in them, that you catch 
cold. 

In fact, staying indoors is usually the reason 
why people are sick. They don't go out into the 
clean fresh air for fear they'll be too cold! It 
seems a pity we can't just live out of doors all the 
time. Perhaps we shall some day; for doctors 



P! 




Courtesy, Department of Child Hygiene, Russell Sage Foundation 
GARDENS TAKE US OUT OF DOORS 

know that fresh air and good food are the best 
medicines and the only "Sure Cures" in some 
kinds of sickness. They are pleasant to take, too. 
Many cities are providing outdoor schools for 
children who have weak lungs or are not strong 
in other ways. Perhaps some day all school chil- 
dren will be allowed to study in the open air at 
least part of every school day. 



M IN SCHOOL 



II. HEARING AND LISTENING 

Now you are all ready to go to work. What 
are you going to work with? Books? pencils? 
paper? Yes, but you have something better than 
those and all ready for use. It is that little kit of 
tools that are sometimes called our " Five Senses/' 
You remember that we have already talked about 
one of them, the sense of touch in the skin. Now 
which one are you going to use first this morning? 
If your teacher talks to you, I hope it will be the 
one we call the sense of hearing. Suppose we try 
to find out something about this sense of hear- 
ing, and begin with a little experiment. 

Take a piece of cork in your hand and lift it 
up high and then let it drop into a large basin or 
tub of water. What happens? The cork strikes 
and then goes bob-bob-bobbing up and down on 
its own waves. Now watch the little waves all 
around the cork. Where do they stop? They 
don't stop until they touch the edge of the pan; 
and no matter how big the pan is, the waves go 
on and on until they reach the edge. 

We can see these waves of water, and so we 
easily believe that they are there. Now there 
are, just as truly, waves of air all around us. We 
cannot see the waves, because they are too small 



HEARING AND LISTENING 55 

and roll too quickly. But some of these, when 
they roll against our ears, make us hear. They 
make what we call sound. You have heard about 
sending messages through the air, without tele- 
graph wires. Wireless messages are often sent 
to ships out in the middle of the ocean. This is 
done by starting tiny electric waves, which travel 
through the air much as the waves of water are 
traveling across the ocean beneath. Of course 
there must be a machine, called a receiver, to 
catch the waves and "hear" the message. 

Mother Nature has given each of you two very 
delicate little receivers to catch the sound waves 
and carry them to your brain. You know what 
they are — you can name them. But how are 
these wonderful little machines made? 

You have never seen the whole of your ear. The 
part on the outside of the head, of course, you 
•can easily see and feel. Sometimes you notice a 
deaf person put his hand behind his ear and press 
it forward so as to catch the sound waves better. 
These waves roll in at the little hole you can 
see, and travel along a short passage till they 
come to a round drum, a piece of very thin skin 
stretched tight like a drumhead. 

Have you ever beaten a drum with a stick? 
You felt the drumhead quiver under the blow, 



56 



IN SCHOOL 



N^FWE. OF 
EARING 



^ 



did you not? Well, when the sound waves beat 
against the drum in the ear, it quivers and starts 
little waves inside the ear. Each little wave in 
turn beats against a little bone called the ham- 
mer; the hammer beats against another called 
the anvil, and this against a third called the 

stirrup ; and the 
quiver of the stir- 
rup is passed on 
to a little window, 
£ybo L ard opening into a lit- 
tle room with a 
spiral key - beard ; 
and from this, the 
wave travels along 
the way by which sound waves anerve to the brain. 

As the waves reach 

A section through the right ear. 

the brain, the brain 
hears. In this way we hear all sorts of sounds, 
from the tick of a watch to the whistle of a train. 
There is a sensible old saying, "Never put 
anything smaller than your elbow into the inner 
part of your ear." Now, of course, you can't put 
your elbow into such a tiny hole ! So the old say- 
ing means, never put anything in. The eardrum 
is very thin and can easily be broken. Even a 
slap on the ear, or a loud sound too close to it, 




HEARING AND LISTENING 57 

might crack and spoil the drum and make one 
deaf. 

The outside ear needs careful washing; there 
are so many little creases that gather dirt and 
dust. The deep crease behind the ear, too, will 
become sore if it is not kept clean. 

Besides cleaning your ears, you must train 
them to listen. Some boys and girls hear just & 
word or two of what is said, and then guess at 
the rest and think they are listening, or else ask 
to have it repeated. We should try to hear ex- 
actly what is said ; and if we listen carefully, it 
will soon be much easier to understand at once. 

Of course, if you really cannot hear, the doctor 
can tell you what is the matter, and usually can 
help you very much. Sometimes people become 
deaf simply because the throat is swollen. In- 
deed, most deafness comes from colds and ca- 
tarrhs and other inflammations of the nose and 
throat. These spread to the ear through a little 
tube that runs up to the drum cavity from the 
back of the throat. Sometimes, when you are 
blowing your nose, you may feel your ear go 
"pop"; and that means that you have blown 
air up into the ear through this little tube. Be 
sure to see a doctor if you don't hear well; and 
be sure, too, to tell your teacher, so that she 



5 8 IN SCHOOL 

may know why it is you do not hear what she 
says, and ask her to give you a seat near her, 
so that you can hear. 

Then, too, you should learn to notice outdoor 
sounds — the songs of the birds, the noises that 
the animals make, the wind in the trees, and the 
patter of the rain. The old Norsemen have a 
story that their god Heimdall had such keen 
ears that he could hear the grass growing in the 
meadow and the wool growing on the backs of the 
sheep! Your ears can never be so keen as that; 
but there are many, many happy outdoor sounds 
that you should listen for. They will help to 
make you happy, too. 

Careful listening may sometime save your life. 
You can hear the car or the train coming, and 
you can learn to tell from which direction a sound 
comes. You can learn to tell one sound from 
another in the midst of many sounds. In more 
ways than you can think of now, this habit of 
listening will protect you from danger. 

There is an old proverb, ''Hear much and say 
little." What does it mean? 

III. SEEING AND READING 

You can learn a great deal through your ears, 
but think how much more you can learn through 




Fholoyrapk by Underwood and Underwood 

' DO YOU HEAR IT ? CAN YOU SEE IT ? " 



6o 



IN SCHOOL 



your eyes. Just count over all the things that 
you have had to get your eyes to tell you to-day, 
and then shut your eyes for a minute and think 
what it would mean never to be able to see. Don't 
you think you ought to take very good care of 

your eyes? You are 
going to keep them 
very busy all your 
life, and they deserve 
the very best care you 
UUi can give them. 

Just as soon as les- 
sons begin, you get 
out your books ; and a 
good share of the day 
in school you have a 
book before you, read- 
ing it or studying it 
the light on the page, not in or copying from it. It 

THE EYES - ,. rr 

makes a great differ- 
ence to your eyes how you hold the book and how 
the light falls. In reading, you should always hold 
your book so that the light falls upon the page 
from behind you, or from over one of your shoul- 
ders. In this way, the brightest light that comes 
into your eyes is not from the window, but from 
the page of your book. 




SEEING AND READING 61 

If the light comes from a window in front of 
you, or if you sit in the evening with your face 
toward the lamp when you read, the light com- 
ing straight from the lamp or the window, as well 
as the light coming up from the pages of the book, 
pours into your eyes; and this dazzles and con- 
fuses your eyes, so that you can't see plainly and 
comfortably and are very likely after a while to 
find that your head aches. At home, of course, 
you can seat yourself with your back to the light 
when you read ; and usually at school your seats 
are so arranged that the light falls from behind 
you or from one side. If not, by turning a little 
in your seat, you can get the light from over 
your shoulder. 

Notice how the light falls upon the blackboard. 
When the light comes from the windows behind 
you, or from one side, you can see what is written 
there quite plainly. But if the blackboard hap- 
pens to be between two windows, and especially 
if this is the lightest side of the room, you will 
find that the light dazzles you so that you cannot 
see the writing clearly. 

You must have noticed, too, that if, after you 
have been reading from the blackboard you look 
down again suddenly to the page of your book, 
for an instant you will not see the letters plainly. 



62 IN SCHOOL 

Then, almost before you have time to notice it, 
you feel a little change take place inside your 
eyes, and the print upon the page of your book 
becomes quite plain. This is because your eye 
has to change the shape of one of the parts in- 
side it, called the lens, before you can see clearly 
the things that are near you. This change, 
which is called accommodation, is made by a little 
muscle of the eye; and if you keep your eyes 
working at close work, like reading or writing 
or fancy-work, too long at a time, or if your 
eyes need glasses to make them see clearly, and 
you have n't them on, this little muscle becomes 
tired. Then the print of your book, or your writ- 
ing, or the stitches you have taken begin to blur 
before your eyes. Your eyes begin to feel tired, 
and your head begins to ache. This is what we 
call eye strain. 

Sometimes this eye strain upsets your appe- 
tite or your digestion and makes you sleepless 
and worried. The trouble may be caused by your 
own carelessness : you may have been reading too 
long, or in a poor light, or with the light shining 
right in your face instead of coming over your 
shoulder. But sometimes it is caused by the fact 
that your eyes are not just the right shape; and 
then the only way to relieve it is to have proper 



SEEING AND READING 63 

glasses, or spectacles, fitted, which will make up 
for this too flat or too round shape, or too large 
or too small size, of your eyes. 

If you cannot see clearly what is written on 
the blackboard when the light falls upon it from 
behind you, or above; or if, in a good light, you 
cannot read the words in your book quite easily, 
without straining at all, when you hold the book 
either at arm's length or a foot from your face; 
or if your head aches or your eyes begin to feel 
tired or uncomfortable, or the letters begin to 
blur, after you have read steadily — say, for half 
an hour, — it is a pretty sure sign that there is 
some trouble with your eyes. Then you had 
better have them examined at once by your 
family doctor or by the school doctor. In many 
schools now there are doctors to test the chil- 
dren's eyes, and ears, too, so that each child 
may have a chance to see and hear everything 
that the other children can see and hear. 

Not very many years ago people thought that 
glasses were only for old people, but now we 
know that many children's eyes need glasses, too. 
I knew a little girl whose sight was so poor that 
when she was standing and looked down at the 
grass, she could n't see the green blades. She 
thought that the grass looked like a green blur 



6 4 



IN SCHOOL 



to everyone, just as it did to her; and so she never 
said anything about it. She was twelve or thir- 
teen years old before she found out that she 
could n't see clearly. Of course, trying hard to 
see things gave her a headache and made her 
tired and cross. So some one took her to a doc- 
tor, and he saw at once what was the matter and 
fitted her with glasses. Soon she was quite well 
and strong; and how glad she was to see the 
leaves and a hundred other things she had not 
seen before! 

Here we have a picture of the eyeball, as we 
call it. The little bands fastened to it are the 

bands of muscle; 
Y 5Q5K 



and as soon as I 
say muscle you 
know what they 
are for — to move 
the eyeball about, 
up and down and 
from side to side. 
There are muscles 
outside the eye as 
well as inside. Coming out from the back of the 
eyeball is a pearly white cord quite different from 
the muscle bands. This is what we call a nerve. 
This nerve in your eye carries to your brain, or 




MUSCLE; 
OPTIC NERVE/ 
MUSCLE; 



THE EYEBALL IN ITS SOCKET 

The muscle from M to M, which helps to turn 
the eyeball, has been cut away to show the optic 
nerve. 



SEEING AND READING 65 

thinking machine, picture-messages of whatever 
you look at. 

The nerve in your eye gets messages of light 
much as the nerve deep in your ear gets its mes- 
sages of sound — from tiny waves in the air. The 
light waves are smaller and faster even than the 
sound waves, and the eye nerve is. the only nerve 
that can get pictures of them. You know that, 
for wireless messages, the receiving machines are 
not all alike and cannot all take the same mes- 
sages, if the messages are sent with different sorts 
of electric waves; and neither can our receiving 
machines. Some get messages of sight, and some 
of sound, and some of touch, or taste, or smell. 

Now shut your eyes as quickly as you can. 
How long did it take you? A minute? No, not 
a quarter of a second. It is about the quickest 
thing you can think of — "the twinkling of an 
eye." You shut your eyes "quick as a wink" 
whenever anything seems likely to fly or splash 
into them, and this is w r hat the eyelids are for. 
If anything gets into the eye before the lids can 
shut, the eye " waters," and tears pour out of it. 
These are made by a gland-sponge up under the 
upper lid, so as to wash any dust or sand or 
other harmful speck out of the eye before it can 
hurt the sensitive eyeball. 



66 IN SCHOOL 

Now look at some one's eyeball. It is like the 
picture, is n't it? — bright white around the edge 
and then a ring of color, brown or blue or gray; 
and inside the color-ring, or iris, a little round 
black hole that we call the pupil. Watch the 
little hole change as you turn the face toward 
the window. It becomes ever so much smaller. 
Now turn the face away from the window, back 
again into the shadow. Hqw did the pupil change 
this time? 

The iris, or color-ring, acts like a curtain, like 
the ring-shutter of a camera, and closes up the 





i. 
EYES PROTECT THEMSELVES AGAINST THE LIGHT 

hole, or pupil, when the light is too bright and 
would dazzle or burn the inside of the eye ; but 
when the light is dim, the iris opens again, so 
as to let in light enough with which to see. Look 
at the little window in your kitten's eyes. It is 
not the same shape as yours ; but when you carry 
her to the light, you see how the iris closes in 
and leaves just a little black slit or line. 



SEEING AND READING 67 

You remember the blind children? Isn't it 
wonderful how they can play games and study, 
too, even though they are blind ! They have to 
make their senses of touch and hearing tell them 
many things that you learn through your sense 
of sight. Many of these children need not have 
been blind, if the nurse who first took care of them 
when they were born had known enough to wash 
their eyes properly, not with soap and water, of 
course, but with just one or two drops of a kind 
of medicine — an antiseptic, as we call it — that 
makes the eye perfectly clean. 

But you children who have good eyes that can 
see, do you really see things when you look at 
them? You can train your eyes just as you can 
train your ears. You can teach them to read 
quickly down a page, and to find things in pic- 
tures, and, better still, to see things out of doors, 
in the garden and the woods and on the seashore. 
We hear a great deal about " sharp eyes," but 
most of us see very little of all we might see. 
Our eyes are on the lookout, too, to protect us 
from dangers that may come ; with our skin and 
nose and ears, they are constantly on the watch; 
so the better we see- the safer we are. 

Even if your eyes are perfect now, you will 
need to take good care of them to keep them 



68 IN SCHOOL 

strong. Don't let any story, no matter how 
interesting it is, tempt you to read in a dim light 
or a light that is too strong. And if you can't see 
the blackboard easily, or can't read big print, 
like the school calendar, across the room, tell 
your mother or your teacher, so that she can ask 
the doctor to find out what the matter is. 

IV. A DRINK OF WATER 

It is astonishing what thirsty work studying 
is! Scarcely is the second recitation over before 
your throat begins to feel dry, and up goes your 
hand — " May I get a drink? " 

If anyone even says the word "water," it 
makes you thirsty. It is so good that just the 
thought of it makes you want some. I should 
like you to notice how much water you drink 
every day. Perhaps a glass in the morning when 
you get up, and one at night before you go to 
bed, and three or four in between. 

Why do we need so much w r ater? Well, how 
much do you weigh? Perhaps you will find it 
hard to believe, but more than half of that 
weight is water; and because we are always giv- 
ing off water from the skin and from the body, 
we need plenty more to take its place. 

No living thing can grow without water. Take 



A DRINK OF WATER 



69 



a bean, for instance, and put it in an empty glass 
on the window sill ; and even if the sun shines full 
upon it, nothing will happen, except that after 
a few days it will shrivel and dry up. But fill the 
glass with water, and in a few hours the bean 
will begin to swell ; and in a few days it will burst, 
and a little shoot will grow out of one end of it 
and a tiny root at the other. The water and the 
warmth together have made it sprout and grow. 
Children at school and people on trains should 
have their own private cups, for serious diseases 







Courtesy. (': ic "<o Hoard of Health 
A DRINKING-CUP EASILY MADE 

may be caught from the mouths of other people. 
You can get a metal pocket folding cup for ten or 
fifteen cents, or paper ones for a few cents a 



7 o IN SCHOOL 

dozen. If you don't have your own cup, I hope 
you will get one and carry it. Here is a pattern 
for a paper cup that you can easily make for 
yourselves. Try it and see. When you have once 
learned how, you can make it very quickly and 
have a fresh cup every time you want one; but 
of course you should be sure first that the paper 
itself is clean. 

If you drink milk, this takes the place of some 
of the water and gives you food as well. It is 
both drink and food ; and a very good food for chil- 
dren it is, too. You know, babies can live on it be- 
cause it has everything in it to make them grow. 

Do you know why it is that people are so care- 
ful nowadays about having milk and drinking- 
water very clean? It is because they have found 
that the tiny plants, called germs, that make 
people sick are often carried about in these drinks. 
A disease called typhoid fever is carried in this 
way. 

Fifty years ago, cities and towns used to be 
very careless about where they got their water 
supply, and would often take it out of streams 
into which other cities emptied their sewage. 
Now, however, they are much more particular; 
and the health officers, or Boards of Health, are 
insisting that public water supply, such as is 



A DRINK OF WATER 



71 




Courtesy, Metropolitan Water Board, Boston, m 
A PIPE FOR THE CITY WATER SUPPLY 
This pipe is laid for many miles to bring water from the distant hills. 

brought into our houses in pipes, shall be taken 
either from some spring or deep-flowing well, or 
from a stream or lake up in the hills, into which 
no drainage from houses or farmyards, and no 
dirty water from factories, empties. 

We are still, however, far from being as care- 
ful as we should be about this ; and I am sorry 
to say that America has had more deaths from 
typhoid fever than any other civilized country. 
Some European countries, which have been more 
particular about keeping their water supplies 
pure, have far fewer deaths from this cause, in 
proportion to their populations — scarcely one 
fifth as many as we have. 



72 IN SCHOOL 

Therefore, by taking proper care, it would be 
quite possible to prevent at least two thirds of 
our nearly 150,000 cases of typhoid fever and of 
over 12,000 deaths from typhoid, every year. 

During the Great War there was practically 
no typhoid in our Army and Navy, because the 
Medical Officers injected a substance under the 
skin of each man to make it difficult for typhoid 
germs to attack him, and because the food and 
water were kept pure. These things were not 
done during the Spanish War, so that there were 
thousands of cases of typhoid. 

In late years there has been more typhoid in 
the country than in the large cities. The main 
cause of this is the custom of having a privy 
vault which is not tight, so that leakage from it 
may seep into the well. By this means the germs 
of typhoid fever and other diseases that affect 
the food tube and digestion may drain through 
the soil till they reach the drinking water. Some- 
times, too, the well is in such a place that some of 
the waste water from the house, or filth from the 
barnyard or pigpen may come to it through the 
porous soil. These dangers can be avoided by hav- 
ing the well dug at some distance from the house 
in higher ground, or by having the drainage from 
the buildings piped and carried to a safe distance. 



A DRINK OF WATER 73 

Fortunately, there are only a few kinds of 
germs that make us sick. Most germs are help- 
ing us all the time; we could not live without 
them. Some of them make our butter taste good, 
and others make our crops grow, and others eat 
up the dirt that would make us sick. But since 
disease germs are so tiny that we cannot possibly 
see them with the naked eye, we must know 
where the water and milk that we use come from, 
and whether or not they are perfectly clean. Boil- 
ing the water will kill these germs and make the 
water pure. Unless milk comes from a dairy 
where the stable and cows and the milkmen and 
the pails and bottles are perfectly clean, it should 
be properly " pasteurized/ ' 

The fruits and fruit juices — lemon and orange 
and raspberry and lime and grape — give nice 
wholesome drinks. Home-made juices are much 
better than those you buy; you can be sure that 
they are pure and really made from fruit. And 
just here I want to caution you against buy- 
ing " pink lemonade " or soda water or an> 
other drink of that sort from the penny venders 
and open stalls on the street. The drinks they 
sell are not made from pure fruit juices, but from 
different flavoring extracts that are made to 
taste like the fruit and are colored with cheap 



74 IN SCHOOL 

dyes. Even the sweetening in them is not pure 
sugar, and they are often made or handled in a 
careless, dirty manner, or exposed to the dust 
of the street, and to flies. 

Not long ago I was at the home of a friend 
where for supper we had the nicest grape juice 
I ever tasted. When I said, "How good it is!" 
one of the little girls piped up, " Billy and I 
picked the grapes, and sister made it all by her- 
self. She learned how at cooking school/ ' 

When I was packing my suitcase to leave, this 
little girl brought out a big bottle of grape juice 
and wanted me to take it with me to remember 
her by. It was all beautifully sealed with wax, 
and even this she had done by herself! Do you 
think I could have kept it that way very long? 
Perhaps not, it was so good ; but if I had wanted it 
for a keepsake, I could have kept it, sealed as it 
was, for years and years, and it would have been 
just as sweet and fresh as when it was given to 
me. 

Suppose, instead of keeping it in its bottle, I 
had poured it out into a glass. Can you tell me 
what would have happened to it then? 

In a few days little bubbles would have come, 
one after another, up to the top of the juice; and 
soon it would have been all full of bubbles. What 



A DRINK OF WATER 75 

causes the bubbles? Floating all about in the air 
and sunshine are tiny specks called spores. These 
are to the tiny yeast plants what seeds are to 
other plants. Seeds fall into the ground and 
grow, but these yeast spores fall into the grape 
juice and grow. While they are growing in the 
grape juice, they eat what they want from the 
juice; and, as they eat, they make bubbles of 
carbon dioxid, — which, you remember, forms 
in our lungs and looks like air, — and of an- 
other substance called alcohol. Of course, when 
they have changed the juice in this way, it 
tastes very different. It is then what we call 
fermented. 

Fermented drinks are harmful; but some people 
like bubbling drinks so much that they leave 
good fresh grape juice open on purpose to let the 
little yeast plants get into it and make it into 
what we call wine. They treat apple juice in just 
the same way to make cider; and they even take 
fresh rye and barley and corn, and mash them 
up, and put yeast plants into the mash to ferment 
them and make them into whiskey and beer. It 
does seem a pity, does n't it, to take good foods 
like wheat and apples and grapes and make them 
into these things that really do us harm if we 
drink them. 



LITTLE COOKS 77 

A very wise man named Solomon, who lived 
thousands of years ago, warned people not to 
drink wine, not even to look at it when it spark- 
led in the cup. He said no really wise man would 
drink it. Of course not; the wise man uses the 
food and drink that make his body grow strong 
and his brain work true, and no fermented drink 
can do thatr 

There is no better drink for anyone than clear 
pure water, and no better food and drink in one 
than pure fresh milk. 

V. LITTLE COOKS 

If you have to come so far to school that you 
cannot go back to dinner and so must bring a 
luncheon with you, be sure to take plenty of 
time to sit down and eat it slowly and chew every 
piece of food thoroughly. Many children who 
bring luncheons to school just grab a piece of food 
in each hand and "bolt" it down as fast as they 
can possibly bite it off and swallow it, and then 
rush out to play. 

Play is good and very important, but you had 
better spare ten or fifteen minutes of it in order 
to chew your lunch thoroughly and swallow it 
slowly, and then to sit or move about quietly 
for a few minutes before starting to play hard. 



78 IN SCHOOL 

This will give your stomach a chance to get all 
the blood it wants to use in digesting the food; 
for, you remember, when you romp and play, 
your blood moves outward toward your skin and 
away from your stomach. Don't think that, just 
because you "picnic" at lunch, it is not as im- 
portant as any other meal. 

I hope, however, that it will not be long before 
almost every school will have a school kitchen 
and a lunch room; first, so that every girl at least 
can learn to cook. It is well worth while being 
able to do; indeed, no girl ought to be considered 
properly educated until she has learned to cook, 
and no boy either, for that matter. Then, if the 
school has this kitchen, it can be used to furnish 
hot luncheons, or dinners, for those children who 
cannot conveniently go home in the noon recess. 
Hot lunches are much more digestible than 
ccld ones, and they taste much better, and are 
much less likely to be eaten in a hurry. 

But why should we learn to cook? Why 
should n't we eat our food raw instead of taking 
all this trouble and pains to cook it? 

I know of a boy — a big lazy fellow — who is 
always forgetting to do things. He used to go 
away in the morning without leaving wood 
enough for the kitchen fire. So his mother said 



LITTLE COOKS 79 

to herself one day, " Til teach him to remember." 
The next morning he went off again and left no 
wood. At noon he came back " hungry as a 
hunter." She called him in to dinner; and in he 
came, sat down, picked up the carving knife — 
then he stopped ! What do you suppose was the 
matter? The beef was raw! Then he lifted the 
cover of the potato dish, and there lay the 
potatoes raw! Then he tried another dish and 
found nice green peas, but hard as little bullets. 
They were raw, too! Not even the bread had 
been cooked; it was a soft, sticky mass of dough. 
His mother, who is a jolly old lady, fairly shook 
with laughter when she told me about it. She 
said she never again had to tell him to split wood. 
Now that boy did n't need to be told one reason 
for cooking. We don't like our food raw; it 
doesn't taste so good. At first, perhaps, that 
does n't sound like a very good reason; but it is 
more important than you think. For it is a 
fact that, just as soon as you smell food, your 
stomach begins to get ready the juice that is to 
digest it. If this very first juice, which is called 
the appetite juice, is not poured out, then the 
food may lie in the stomach some little time 
before it begins to be digested at all. So it is quite 
important that our food should smell and taste 



80 IN SCHOOL 

and look good, as well as have plenty of strength 
and nourishment in it. 

Another reason for cooking is that it either 
softens or crisps our food so that we can chew it 
better and digest it more readily. You know 
what a difference there is between trying to eat 
a raw potato and a nice, mealy, well-baked one, 
or trying to eat popcorn before it is popped and 
after. 

Another good thing, too, cooking does, which 
is very important. It kills any disease germs, or 
germs of decay, that may happen to have got 
upon the food from dust or flies, or from careless, 
dirty handling. 

Of course, some of our food, such as apples 
and other ripe fruits, and celery and lettuce and 
other green vegetables, we can eat raw and digest 
quite well; but we should be careful to see that 
they have been thoroughly washed with water 
that we know to be pure. Grocers often have a 
careless way of putting fruit and vegetables out 
upon open stands in front of the shop, or in open 
boxes or baskets inside the store, and leaving 
them there all day. This is very dangerous, 
because dust from the street, which contains 
horse manure and all sorts of germs, may blow 
in upon them; flies, which have been eating gar- 



LITTLE COOKS 81 

bage or feeding at the mouths of sewers, may 
come in and crawl over them. You ought to be 
very sure that anything that you are going to eat 
raw, or without thorough cooking, has been well 
washed. And you ought to ask your mother to 
speak to your grocer, if he is careless in this way, 
and have him keep his fruit and vegetables, as 
well as sugar and crackers and beans and dried 
fruit, either under glass or well screened from 
flies and dust. 

More important than almost anything else in 
good cookery is to keep the food and the kitchen 
and the dishes and your hands perfectly clean all 
the way through, so that nothing that will upset 
your digestion can get into the food. After 
things are well cooked, it is very important that 
they should be nicely served on clean dishes, on a 
clean table cloth, with polished knives and shin- 
ing spoons and forks. This means not only that 
everything about the table and the food will be 
perfectly clean and wholesome, but that you will 
enjoy eating it a great deal more. And when you 
enjoy your food, you remember, your stomach 
can secrete the juice that is needed to digest it, 
very much faster and better than when, as you 
say, you are just "poking it down." 

If you have a school kitchen and a lunch 



82 IN SCHOOL 

room, you can learn the best way of cooking and 
serving things; and then, perhaps, you can do 
these same things at home and be a real help- 
Most children are fond of trying to cook, and I 
am glad that they are. Everyone, boys and girls 
both, should know how to cook simple things. 
Perhaps some day you will be stranded, like 
Robinson Crusoe, on a desert island! Perhaps 
the rest of the family may be sick. How nice it 
would be for you to be able to prepare breakfast 
for them. I know a family where the youngest 
boy often rises early and gets breakfast for five. 
He can fry the bacon and boil the eggs and make 
the coffee and mush and biscuit just as nicely 
as his mother can; and he takes pride in it and 
enjoys it. 

Cooking is what we call an art. Everyone, of 
course, can learn to do it; but some people can 
do it much better than others, just as some boys 
and girls can draw better than others. I hope 
some of you will be what we might call " artist 
cooks." Take pride in the art and learn all that 
you can about it. There are so many things a 
cook should know. 

A great deal of good food is spoiled by bad 
cookery, particularly by frying slowly in tepid 
grease, or fat, so that it becomes soaked with 



LITTLE COOKS 83 

grease. You should have the frying pan just as 
hot as possible before you begin to fry; and then 
the meat or potatoes or cakes will be seared, or 
coated over, on the outside, so that the fat can- 
not soak into them, and they will not only taste 
better, but will be much more digestible. 

In baking you will have to be careful not to 
let the oven become too hot, or else the meat or 
bread will be burned or scorched. Even if the 
heat does not do this, it may harden and toughen 
the outside of the meat so that it is almost im- 
possible either to chew or digest. 

Sugar is really a very good food if you do not 
eat too much at once, and so pure candy is good 
for you if you do not eat too much. The very best 
time to eat it is at the end of a meal. If you learn 
to make it at school or at home, you can always 
have some to eat after your luncheon without 
having to buy it. If you do buy candy, don't 
get the bright colored kind; it looks pretty, but 
it may hurt you. And be sure to see that it has 
been kept under a cover, where the dust and flies 
could not get at it. Dust is dirty, and flies don't 
wipe their feet. You want clean, pure candy. 

Of course, after cooking, you will always be 
very careful to wash up all the pots and pans and 
dishes that you have used. Food and scraps 



84 IN SCHOOL 

that are left sticking to dishes and cooking 
utensils very quickly turn sour and decay; and 
then the next time the dishes are used, you will 
perhaps have an attack of indigestion, and won- 
der why. 

There are two things you should always notice: 
Whether the bread you eat is sweet and thor- 
oughly baked ; if it is soggy and sour, it will make 
trouble in your stomach. Whether all your food 
is clean and fresh before it is cooked ; this you 
can tell by your eyes and nose. 

VI. TASTING AND SMELLING 

When, at home, you give the baby a ball or a 
key or a watch to play with, what does he do with 
it the very first thing? He is never quite happy, 
is he, until he has put it into his mouth? Does 
he want to eat it? No, he wants to feel it; and 
he has not yet learned to feel very carefully with 
his hands, as you do. 

Can you feel with your mouth? If you have 
the- least little hole in one of your teeth, you 
know it as soon as you rub your tongue against it. 
How big it feels and how rough the edges seem! 
If you take a looking-glass, you find, if you can 
see the hole at all, that it is just a tiny, tiny hole. 

Your tongue and lips, like the rest of your skin, 



TASTING AND SMELLING 85 

are always touching and feeling things for you 
and sending messages to the brain. They say 
whether your milk is hot or cold, and whether 
the food you eat is soft enough and quite right in 
other ways. Your tongue is a very busy little 
"waiter": he passes the food about in your 
mouth for the teeth to chew, and he rolls it about 
at a great rate. But he does more than this; he 
tells you something about how it tastes — not 
everything, as you may think, but only whether 
it is bitter, sweet, sour, or salty. Queer as it may 
seem, your nose tells you the other " tastes, " 
which are really smells. It is your nose that says 
whether you have a strawberry or a piece of 
onion in your mouth, whether it is coffee or cocoa 
that you are drinking. 

Of what other use is your nose? — for only a 
little patch in the upper part is for smelling and 
tasting. The greater part of the nose is to breathe 
through. You see, your nose warms and moistens 
the outside air that you take in, so that, by the 
time it reaches your throat, it is as warm as your 
body and does not hurt your throat. Your nose 
also strains, or filters, out of the air the dust, 
lint, and germs that may be floating in it. 

You should always keep your lips closed and 
breathe through your nose. Whenever you can- 



86 



IN SCHOOL 



UPPER] i 
TOOTH 

LOWER ^ 
TOOTH- 



VOCAL CDRD 



not breathe through your nose, there is some- 
thing the matter. It may be that your nose is 

swollen shut with 
a "cold"; but 
that will last only 
a few days. If, 
however, your 
nose often feels 
11 stuffed up," 
there is proba- 
bly something in 
it or behind it, 
^ that ought to be 
taken away. A 
throat doctor can 
easily cure you; 
and,whenhehas, 
you'll be sur- 
prised how much better you feel and how much 
faster you grow. 

I once knew a little girl whose nose was always 
blocked up. She had headache and felt tired 
most of the time and was behind in her classes. 
The doctor told her what was the matter, but 
her father and mother were afraid that it might 
hurt her to have the doctor take out what was 
clogging her nose. Well, what did she do? In- 




A CLEAR PASSAGE TO THE LUNGS 
(Follow the arrows.) 



TASTING AND SMELLING 



87 




ADENOIDS 



A PASSAGE BLOCKED BY ADENOIDS 



stead of crying and being afraid, one day she 
walked right into the doctor's office and asked 
him to take out 
the adenoids, as 
we call these 
growths that 
block up the nose. 
And after the 
doctor had taken 
them out, she be- 
gan to grow well 
and fat and strong so fast that she soon "caught 
up" in her classes. 

When you breathe well through your nose, 
you can smell and taste better, too. In fact, 
when your nose is clogged, you cannot smell at 
all. 

How does this sense of smell help us? You say 
we can smell the flowers and the fresh air after 
the rain, and cookies baking, and all the things 
that we like so well. Yes, and these give us 
pleasure; but how about the bad smells? The 
bad smells are warnings. If there is a dead mouse 
or rat about, we smell it; and that leads us to 
look for it and take it away. We smell the dirt 
and get rid of it, and thus keep away sickness. 
When we walk into a room, if the air is bad we 



88 IN SCHOOL 

smell it at once and open a window or a door r 
and so save ourselves from being poisoned. 

Some people hurt their noses by smoking 
tobacco. The inside skin of the nose is very deli- 
cate, and the smoke going back and forth through 
the nose and the throat keeps them from doing 
their work properly. It is very bad for little 
children even to smell tobacco smoke. It seems 
in some way to keep them from growing as they 
would in clear fresh air. What a silly habit 
smoking is! It does no one any good. It hurts 
not only the people who make the smoke, but 
the people who have to smell it. Most of the 
people who smoke tobacco have to learn to like 
it. It almost always makes them very sick when 
they first begin. 

Sir Walter Raleigh, or the men he sent to 
America, first taught our great-great-great- 
grandfathers to smoke. His men bought tobacco 
of the Indians here and took it back to England; 
and Sir Walter himself learned to smoke and 
made smoking fashionable. The first time that 
Sir Walter's servant saw him smoking, he thought 
his master was on fire; so what did he do but 
bring a big bucket of water and throw it all over 
him! I wish that that bucket of water had set- 
tled the matter, so that Sir Walter had stopped 



TALKING AND RECITING 89 

smoking and had never taught anyone else to 
smoke. If it had, think how much money might 
have been put to better use, for smoking is a 
very costly habit. And it is not only wasteful of 
money, but, worse still, of health; for it is the 
cause of a great deal of poor health and disease. 
Remember that you want the air you breathe 
perfectly fresh and clean and not spoiled and 
poisoned by tobacco smoke. 

VII. TALKING AND RECITING 

When I was little and playing with my bro- 
thers, I did not always do what they wanted. 
So they'd sometimes say, " We'll put him in 
Coventry, then he'll do it." They did not really 
put me anywhere. They simply would not speak 
to me or answer anything I said. It was just as 
if I were entirely alone. Of course it was a quick 
way to make me ready to take my part in the 
game again. 

How do you think you would feel if you never, 
never could speak to anyone, and no one could 
speak to you? What a quiet world we'd have! 
Almost every day I meet a boy who can't hear 
and can't speak. How does he ask for things? 
He makes letters and spells words with his fingers, 
and his friends watch his fingers and read what 



9 o IN SCHOOL 

he says. Is that the way you do? " No, indeed, " 
you say, "I talk." "What do you talk with?" 
"I talk with my mouth." Yes, that's true 
enough ; but if you did not use something besides 
your mouth, you'd never make a sound. 

Where does the sound come from? Feel gently 
with your finger and thumb along the front of 
your neck. Do you find something harder than 
the rest of your throat? That is the large tube 
called your windpipe. Do you feel a ridge stick- 
ing out from this? Now sing or talk a little. You 
can feel the ridge move up and down, and the 
sound thrill in it. That is where the sound comes 
from. That is your voice-and-music box, or 
larynx. 

You have seen the little red rubber balloons, 
have n't you? You blow into them until they 
are big and round; and then, when you take your 
mouth away, out comes the air, making a 
squawking or whistling sound. Now, if you look 
closely at the mouthpiece, you see a tiny piece of 
rubber tied across it. The air rushing past this 
rubber is what makes your balloon sing. 

Your own music box is made on the same plan. 
When you breathe out, the air is pushed from 
your lungs up the pipe that we call the windpipe. 
In the upper part of this is the little box, a 



TALKING AND RECITING 91 

corner of which you can feel with your thumb 
and finger. Across the box, inside, are stretched 
two folds of skin and muscle, just as the rubber 
is stretched across the opening of the balloon. 
Whenever you like, you can blow out your 
breath between these folds of skin in your voice 
box. Blow it out in one way, and what happens? 
You are singing. Blow it out in another way, and 
you are talking; in still another way, and you 
are just making a noise — perhaps mewing like 
a kitten, or neighing like a horse. If you pull 
these folds of skin close together, you can close 
your windpipe and "hold your breath/ ' A cough 
is made by filling your chest with air, holding 
the folds close shut, and then suddenly " letting 
go." How many sounds you can make from one 
tiny music box! Of course the muscles of the 
mouth and throat, and the teeth and the tongue 
all help the voice box as much as they can. 

One of the best ways to keep your voice clear 
and strong is to dash cold water every morning 
on your throat and chest, then to rub with a 
coarse towel till your skin is pink and warm. 
Gargle your throat with cold water if your voice 
is husky. Singing is very good for you, too; but 
don't try to sing too hard. Sing easily and gently, 
and see how many words you can sing without 



92 IN SCHOOL 

taking a breath. That is good for the lung- 
bellows as well as the voice box. Always sing in 
fresh air, but not in cold air. 

When you talk, try to make all the words clear 
and distinct ; open your mouth and let the sound 
out. Once I had a big grown boy in one of my 
classes who did not open his lips properly when 
he spoke. So I asked him to prop his mouth open 
with a piece of stick and then talk. I made him 
do it until he learned to speak much more clearly. 
A famous Greek orator, named Demosthenes, 
who had a habit of mumbling his words, trained 
himself to speak clearly by putting pebbles in his 
mouth and then reciting in a loud voice. 

When you want your voices to sound pleas- 
ant, — and that is always, of course, — you must 
call on your brain to help. That is your thinking 
machine. Always think twice before you let 
anything unpleasant or unkind come out of your 
voice box. How happy we could make everyone 
about us if we followed this rule ! 

VIII. THINKING AND ANSWERING 

Suppose, as you are walking home from school 
to-day, you are about to cross the street when 
you see an automobile coming very fast. What 
do you do? You stop, of course; wait for it to go 



THINKING AND ANSWERING 93 

by, and then start on again. Why do you stop? 
"Why," you say, "if I didn't, the automobile 
might run over me." Something of that sort 
would just flash through your mind, would n't it, in 
the very same second that you first saw the auto- 
mobile coming. Now, as you know, you think 
with your brain. But what was it this time that 
set your brain to thinking? " Nothing," you say, 
"I just saw the automobile coming." And that 
is true in a way: you did n't need anything more 
than your eyes to tell you. 

But how did your eyes get the message to 
your brain, and how did your brain tell your legs 
to stop walking? We must have in our bodies a 
kind of telephone system. And that is, in fact, 
just what we have. Our brain is our "central 
office"; and our nerves are the wires, running 
from all parts of our body to the brain, carrying 
messages back and forth. 

An old man and an old woman lived out on the 
very edge of a little town. One day their house 
caught fire and was blazing away before they 
noticed it. They rushed to their neighbor's tele- 
phone and rang up " Central" to tell her to 
" phone" for the firemen and hose cart. Kling 
a-ling-a-ling! went their bell, but no "Central" 
answered ; and while a man was running to town 



94 IN SCHOOL 

to get the firemen, the fire got such a good start 
that the house burned down. 

You can see from this why we need a central 
office in good working order, when we use the 
" phone. " All the wires run into the one build- 
ing, and there must be some one there to receive 
calls and see that they are sent out to their 
proper places. In this case, you see, "Central" 
should have been at her post to see that the mes- 
sage went on to the engine house, and then the 
fire would have been put out "double-quick." 

The "central office" of our Body Telephone 
System is just as important and just as necessary 
to keep in good working order. It would be very 
little use to have even the keenest of eyes and 
the sharpest of ears, with the readiest of nerve 
wires to carry their messages into the center of 
the body, unless we had some organ, or head- 
quarters, there for switching the messages over 
to the nerves running to the right muscles to tell 
them what to do. If the brain- " Central " should 
fail in its duty, or get out of order, then the body 
would be in serious trouble at once. 

Every day we read in the papers of accidents 
because somebody did n't think, as well as see 
or hear. People see cars and automobiles com- 
ing, but don't give them a thought and so are 



THINKING AND ANSWERING 95 

run down and hurt. They hear the whistle of the 
engine at the crossing, but drive on just the same, 
without seeming to have heard it at all. They are 
absent-minded; the operator in the " central 
office' ' seems to be off duty, or busy about some- 
thing else. But if we are going to get on in this 
world of cars and automobiles and all sorts of 
unexpected things, we must always "have our 
wits about us," as the saying goes, ready to send 
the messages out to the muscles in our legs and 
arms and fingers just as soon as any one of our 
"Five Senses' ' "rings up" the "Central" in our 
brain. 

Our body wires do not look at all like telephone 
wires; and the brain, if you could see it, would 
never suggest to you a central office. 

The nerves are fine white cords, the smallest 
ones finer than a hair, and the largest so big and 
strong that you could lift the body by it; and 
their branches run all over the body, to the mus- 
cles and the blood tubes and the skin and all the 
other parts, as the picture shows. You have 
already read how the skin can tell you when you 
feel warm and when you feel cold and when 
something hurts you. 

The brain is a soft wrinkled mass, partly gray 
and partly white. It is in the head ; and because 



9 6 



IN SCHOOL 



it is very soft and easily hurt, Mother Nature 
has put around it a strong wall, or shell, of bone 

— the skull, or brain 
box. Feel your head 
and see how very 
hard this bone is. 
Solomon, the He- 
brew poet-king, 
called it the " gold- 
en bowl." I suppose 
he called it a "bowl" 
because it is round 
like one, and " gold- 
en' ' because it is so 
precious. People do 
not often grow well 
again if the "golden 
bowl" is broken or 
even cracked. 

The big nerve ca- 
ble, called the spinal 
the nervous system -our body cord, that connects 

TELEPHONE . . 

™ • ♦ u *u u ■ .. n . i .. a the brain with the 

The picture shows the brain, or " Central, and 

the thick nerve cord that runs down through rDC 4- ~f fU^ Y\r\A\7 onrl 

the backbone, and the principal nerves of the rUbL U1 U1C uuu y > <iAlU 

back and the arms. • 11 ,1 

carries all the mes 
sages backward and forward, runs down the back 
and is protected by the backbone, or spine, which 




THINKING AND ANSWERING 97 

is hollow, so that the cord can run down through 
it. This backbone is jointed together so beauti- 
fully, too, that you can bend your back about 
and stoop over, and carry heavy weights on your 
back, and yet the bony tube still protects the 
cord inside. Solomon calls this the " silver cord," 
because it is so white and shiny that it looks like 
silver. You see, our bodies are full of beautiful 
as well as wonderful things. 

Probably sometime when your teacher has 
asked you to recite a poem you have all learned, 
someone in the class has answered, "I don't 
remember it," or has stood up and recited the 
first few lines and then stopped, and thought, 
and finally had to say, "I can't go on." 

Now what is the matter with this boy, or girl? 
He looks bright enough, and you will probably 
remember that he was in the class when you 
learned the poem. "Oh," you say, "the poem 
did n't stay in his head." No, it did n't "stick" 
in his memory; but why did n't it? 

Some of the messages that the Five Senses 
carry to the brain are answered at once, as when 
we move away from danger, or reach out our 
hands and help ourselves to butter, or take off a 
shoe to shake out a pebble. But there are other 
messages that do not call for an immediate 



98 IN SCHOOL 

reply, and are just stored away for future use in 
the big " central office' ' of our Body Telephone, 
in what we call our memory. And later, when the 
proper message is sent in by our eyes or ears, 
or other sense organs, which reminds us of this 
message which they sent before, perhaps several 
weeks, months, or even years ago, it wakes up 
the old message stored away in the memory, 
and we say we " remember' ' what happened to 
us, or what we learned at that time. 

So, when your teacher asks you to recite a 
certain poem, and your ears hear the title or the 
first line, you recall the rest of the verses and the 
lesson about it. How many things does the word 
"Christmas" wake up out of your memory? or 
the sight of soldiers marching? or the first taste 
of strawberries in May? 

You think about a great many things that you 
never do. Really you are thinking almost all the 
time you are awake. And besides the messages 
that "Central" just stores away for future use, 
there are a great many messages being carried 
back and forth along the "telephone system" 
all the time, that you don't keep track of at 
all — the messages that keep the stomach and 
the heart and the lungs and everything in your 
body working together properly. 



THINKING AND ANSWERING 99 

How are we to take care of the telephone lines 
and " Central' ' of our nervous system? Whatever 
you do to build up and help the other parts of 
the body will help your brain to feel and think 
and remember; and will help your muscles and 
nerves to answer promptly and truly whatever 
the message may be. Plenty of good food, plenty 
of sleep and fresh air, plenty of play, will keep 
your nerves and brain healthy and growing. 



11 ABSENT TO-DAY?" 

I. KEEPING WELL 

How many times have you been absent this 
term? No oftener than you were obliged to be, 
I am sure; for it's almost as bad as being "put 
in Coventry" to come back and hear about the 
good time the rest of the class have been having, 
and feel that you "weren't in it." Of course, 
sometimes, when you are not well, you have to be 
absent; it is best that you should be. But it is 
better still to know how to keep well, so you won't 
have to be absent, and won't have to miss any 
good times in work or play all your life. 

You remember that all the parts of your body 
are fed and ventilated by the blood, which is 
pumped to them from the heart. So long as this 
blood is pure and has plenty of oxygen in it, it 
does good to every part of the body to which it 
comes. But the moment that poisons and dirt 
and waste begin to pile up in the blood, then the 
blood that comes to the different parts of the 
body may be poisonous to them, instead of help- 
ful. 

Such poisons in the blood are particularly 



KEEPING WELL 101 

harmful to the nerves and the brain, because 
these are among the most delicate and sensitive 
of all the structures in the body. 

Often we think of the body as a beautiful 
house. Now a house does not look very beautiful 
when it has dust and crumbs on the floor, 
buckets of greasy dishwater in the kitchen, and 
smoke from the furnace in the air! You could 
not live in such a place. No, the smoke must go 
out up the chimney, the dust and crumbs must 
be swept away, the dirty water must be drained 
off in pipes; the house must be not only cleaned, 
but kept clean all the time. This is true of your 
body, too. 

Now Mother Nature sends the smoke from 
the body out through the lungs, and the crumbs 
and solid dirt down and out by means of the 
food tube. But the waste water — how does she 
get rid of that? The waste water, you remember, 
is in the blood vessels, mixed with the blood. 
How does she get it out of the blood? She sends 
it through three magic cleaners, or strainers, — 
the skin, the liver, the kidneys. 

That the skin is a strainer, you already know; 
for you know how the skin lets out the waste 
water in perspiration, or sweat, and how im- 
portant it is that we keep the little holes of the 



102 



'ABSENT TO-DAY? 






strainer open and clean. And you know, too, 
that most of the water that passes out of the body 
goes first to the kidneys. 

The liver, however, is the largest cleaning 
machine of all and has to work very hard. The 
blood comes to it full of foods and poisons. This 
wonderful cleaner picks out the food it needs 

and takes up many of the 
poisons, too. "What does 
it do with the poisons?" 
you ask. Some of them it 
changes into good food, 
and others it makes harm- 
less and sends away down 
the food tube in a fluid 
called bile. If we are strong 
and healthy, the liver 
helps to rid the body of 
many disease germs that get in. That is why 
sometimes, when you have had a chance to take 
mumps or grippe or some other " catching' ' dis- 
ease, you don't take it. Your liver is useful in 
freeing you of germs. See how carefully Mother 
Nature has planned that we may be clean inside 
as well as outside. 

But you must not over-work your liver. If 
you do, it may become too tired to do anything 




THE POSITION OF THE LIVER 

Compare this with the diagram on 
page 26, and see how the liver partly 
overlaps the stomach. 



KEEPING WELL 103 

at all. Then all these poisons will spread through 
the body ; the skin and the whites of the eyes will 
grow yellow, and you will be what is called 
"bilious." When this happens, the poisons go 
to your brain, too, and make you feel sad; your 
tongue looks white instead of pink, and you have 
a disagreeable taste in your mouth. Your hap- 
piness depends very much on your liver. 

"How shall I keep my liver rested and in good 
working order?" By eating only sound, whole- 
some, pure food, and avoiding dirty milk; by 
going to the toilet regularly every morning after 
breakfast; by keeping your windows open and 
avoiding the poisons and disease germs in foul 
air. Then, if you run and play and work out of 
doors, so that the muscles move a great deal and 
you breathe in plenty of oxygen to keep the body 
fires burning briskly, that will help a great deal. 

Last summer up in the mountains I saw a big 
log close by the path. It had been sawed across 
so that the end was smooth. It was brown and 
weather-stained, so of course I knew that it had 
lain there a long time. How surprised I was to 
see a pile of fine fresh sawdust on the ground 
beside it. As I came nearer, I saw piece after 
piece of sawdust dropping, dropping, dropping, 
one after the other, from a hole in the log. I 



104 "ABSENT TO-DAY?" 

looked into the hole, and what do you think I 
saw? Hundreds of little brown ants, busy as 
could be carrying the sawdust, throwing it out, 
and then scurrying back to get some more 
Several feet inside the log, other ants were cut- 
ting the sawdust, hollowing out the rooms of 
their house; and in another part others were 
getting food for the workers, and still others 
taking care of the baby ants. They were all 
helping one another, and whatever one ant did 
helped all the rest. That is the way with the 
parts, or organs, of the body. When one part 
works well, it helps all the rest; when one squad 
of tiny cells in the muscles or liver or heart 
is doing its duty, like the little ants, it helps 
all the other cell-workers in the body to keep 
healthy. 

If you eat proper food, you help not only your 
stomach but your liver, too; for it has not so 
many poisons to get rid of. While you are help- 
ing your stomach and your liver, you are helping 
your heart and your brain, and so on. So what 
you do to help one helps all. 

There are, however, some poisons that the 
liver cannot get rid of; but these the skin or the 
kidneys carry away. Have you ever seen kidney 
beans? The bean is the shape of a kidney. The 



KEEPING WELL 



105 




kidneys are in the middle of your back, packed 
close to your backbone, on a line with your waist. 
This is a picture of them. Do you see the little 
tubes leading down from the kidneys, carrying 
the waste water and poison 
down into a kind of bag? 
The walls of this bag, called 
the bladder j will stretch, and 
it will hold about a pint of 
waste water. From the blad- 
der a tube carries the water 
down out of the body. 

You can help your kidney- 
strainers by emptying your 
bladder at certain times each 
day. Some children have to 
empty the bladder much oftener than others, 
but most children can form what we call regular 
habits about it, by trying to do it at the same 
times each day. If you are quite strong, five 
times a day is often enough : when you first get 
up, at recess, at noon, at four o'clock, and at 
bedtime. Many children do it much oftener than 
this; but as they grow older and the muscles 
grow stronger, they slowly outgrow this trouble, 
if they try to form the right habits. 

There are many diseases of the kidneys; for, 



THE KIDNEYS AND 
THE BLADDER 

The large tubes are the artery 
and the vein that carry blood to 
and from this part of the body. 



106 " ABSENT TO-DAY?" 

like the liver, they are sometimes over-worked 
and do not carry the poisons from the body. 
You are helping your kidneys when you drink 
plenty of fresh clean water every day, and also 
when you play or work hard enough to get into 
a good perspiration ; for, as perspiring carries out 
some of the poisons, it leaves less for the kidneys 
to pour out. You ought to get into a good perspi- 
ration at least once every day, or better, three or 
four times, if you wish to keep healthy. The 
Bible says, " In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou 
eat bread"; and you must earn health and hap- 
piness at the same price. 

II. SOME FOES TO FIGHT 

You have seen that sitting or sleeping in rooms 
where the air is bad, or eating the wrong kind 
of food, or working after you are badly tired, will 
poison your blood and hinder the proper working 
of that beautiful machine, your body. These 
poisons are made inside your body, and you can 
prevent them by living healthfully and whole- 
somely. But there are other poisons, which may 
get into the blood from outside the body; and 
while it is best for you not to think too much 
about these, or to worry over dangers that may 
never come, yet it is well to know just enough 



SOME FOES TO FIGHT 107 

about some of them to be able to keep out of 
their way, as far as possible. 

The most dangerous form of poisons from out- 
side the body are those made by the germs of 
some rather common diseases, which, because 
you can "catch" them from some one else who 
has them, are called "catching," or infectious, or 
contagious. 

Some of the germs of these " catching' ' dis- 
eases, like the germs of typhoid fever, of which 
we have spoken in connection with our drinking 
water, are carried in the water or milk that we 
drink, or upon the food that we eat; and one of 
the worst carriers of germs is the ordinary house- 
hold fly. 

Not so very many years ago, people did not 
know that dirt makes people sick. You see, they 
did not know anything about the disease seeds 
(germs) that grow so fast in dirt. They did not 
like to have flies about, because flies look so 
dirty and bite people and crawl over things and 
spot them. But nowadays, we will not have flies 
about because we know that they have been in 
dirty places where disease germs live, and that 
one little fly can carry thousands and thousands 
of these germs on his feet. 

Have you ever looked at a fly through a mag- 



io8 



ABSENT TO-DAY?" 



nifying glass or under a microscope? If you 
haven't, try it sometime. You will see that his 
legs are covered with little hairs; and it is on 




THE COMMON HOUSE FLY 

As he appears through a magnifying glass. 

these little hairs that the germs lodge. They are 
too small for you to see except with a very power- 
ful glass; but scientists have proved that they 
are there, and they have found that there may 
be typhoid germs among them. 

Did you ever see a fly wipe his feet before he 
came into the house? No, indeed; and he goes 
anywhere he pleases, over the bread and into the 
cream. Yet he was born in dirt and bred in dirt, 
and he lives in dirty places all the time he is not 
crawling over your clean things and spoiling them. 



SOME FOES TO FIGHT 109 

Flies are hatched from eggs; and these eggs 
can hatch only in piles of dirt, such as heaps of 
manure, or places where garbage and scraps from 
the house are dumped or thrown. We call the 
common fly the ' 'domestic' ' or " house' ' fly, be- 
cause he lives only in the neighborhood of houses 
and barnyards where heaps of manure and piles 
of dirt are allowed to gather. 

When the fly first hatches from the egg, it is 
a little white, wriggling worm called a maggot, 
like those that some of you 
may have seen in decaying 
meat or fish or cheese. The 
maggots must have decaying 
substances to eat and live a maggot hatching 

FROM THE EGG 

upon while they are growing, (Greatly magnified.) 

and this is why the eggs are laid in manure heaps 
and garbage piles. 

It takes the maggot about five days to grow 
to its full size, and then it turns into a chrysalis. 
That is, it is shut up in a kind of case that it has 
spun for itself, like the cocoon of the silkworm or 
the caterpillar. In about five days more it 
breaks out of this cocoon and appears as a fly 
with wings. 

So, you see, the eggs must stay in that manure 
heap about two weeks if they are to hatch. If, 




no 



'ABSENT TO-DAY?" 






within that time, the manure is carted away and 
thrown out somewhere where it will dry, the 
little unhatched flies will be killed, or prevented 
from hatching. All we have to do, then, to be 
entirely rid of flies about our houses is to see 
that the heaps of manure and all piles of cans 
and garbage are taken away at least once a 
week. 

If manure heaps or piles of dirt cannot, for any 
reason, be carried away as often as this, then they 
can be sprinkled with something that is poison- 
ous to flies, such as arsenic or kerosene. This will 

kill the maggots. If 
we keep every kind 
of waste and scraps 
from the house, and 
all the manure from 
the barn and the 
pig-pen and the 
hen - house carefully 
cleaned up, or sprin- 
kled with some poi- 
son, we shall get rid 
of flies entirely and 
never need to use 
screens at the doors and windows. Until we do 
this, it is best to put screens at the doors and 




FLY MAGGOTS ON OLD NEWS- 
PAPER 

Note the size of the maggot compared with 
the newspaper type. 



SOME FOES TO FIGHT in 

windows in the summer time, and particularly 
to screen carefully any place where food is kept 
or cooked ; for we know that a great many cases 
of typhoid and of other diseases of the stomach 
and bowels, such as summer sickness, or summer 
diarrhea, and cholera morbus, are carried to our 
food by the dirty feet of flies. 

Many of the germs of "catching" diseases — 
most of them, in fact — are carried in the air, in 
scales that have rubbed off the skin of the per- 
sons sick with them, or in spray that they have 
coughed into the air, or in saliva that they have 
spit upon the floor. 

There is one sickness of this kind that I ought 
to tell you about, because it kills so many thou- 
sand people here in our own country every year. 
We sometimes call it the " Great White Plague." 
Its common name is consumption, and the doctors 
call it tuberculosis. I dare say you have heard of 
it and wondered what it meant. 

A few years ago people thought it could not 
be cured. They thought that children had it 
because their parents had had it before them. 
But now, the cheering thing about it is that we 
have found that Mother Nature herself can cure 
it with fresh air and sunshine and wholesome 
food. We have found, too, that people catch it 



SOME FOES TO FIGHT 113 

from others who are sick with it, and need not 
have it just because their parents did. 

This means, then, that thousands of people 
who have it need not die, but can be cured simply 
by living and sleeping out of doors and eating 
plenty of milk, eggs, and meat, nuts and fruit. 
There are camps for them in almost every state 
in the Union now. The fresh air gives them such 
a big appetite that they can eat more than most 
healthy people, and they soon get strong and 
well. 

If all the people who now have consumption 
were taken out into the country and cured, there 
would be no one left for the rest of us to catch it 
from, and the disease would soon die. Some day 
our Boards of Health will decide to do this, and 
then consumption will become as rare as small- 
pox is now, and will kill only a few hundred 
people a year in the United States instead of 
150,000 every year, as it does now. 

People and governments are giving great sums 
of money, not only to cure the people who now 
have consumption, but to do something towards 
stopping the disease by keeping things so clean 
and people so strong that no one will ever have it. 
Even little children can help to fight and kill this 
''Great White Plague/' and I'll tell you how. 



H4 



f ABSENT TO-DAY?" 



We know that, when people have consumption 
in their lungs, what they cough and spit out of 
their mouths and blow out of their noses (we call 
it sputum) has the germs, or seeds, of the disease 
in it. So, to keep other people from catching the 
disease, they must hold something before the 
face when they cough, and they must catch the 
sputum in paper (newspapers or paper napkins 
are very good for this) and burn it, for burning 
kills the germs. Then, too, they must not kiss 
other people on the mouth, and 
others must not kiss them. They 
must use their own drinking-cups, 
and never lend or borrow a cup. 
You see, you can look out for these 
things, yourselves. When grown 
people kiss you, just turn your 
cheek to them, instead of your 
mouth. Your cheek will not carry 
anything to your windpipe and 
lungs. And be sure to carry your 
own drinking-cup, or, better still, 
make the one for which you already have the 
pattern, every time you need one. 

This sounds easy enough; and it is, too. But 
sometimes people don't know when they have 
this "plague," and of course they do not feel 




HIS OWN CUP 
AND TOWEL 



SOME FOES TO FIGHT 115 

that they must be careful. What is to be done, 
then? 

If people won't take care of themselves, then 
the government has to make health laws to pro- 
tect them, and the health officers have to see 
that the laws are obeyed. In many of the states 
and cities, laws have been made so that nobody 
is allowed to spit on the sidewalk or in the cars 
or in any other public place ; and common drink- 
ing-cups are forbidden at all park fountains and 
at the water-coolers in schools and trains and 
stations and other public places. 

You ought to know about these things, be- 
cause, as I have just said, other sicknesses, too, 
are carried about in the nose and mouth. Grippe, 
pneumonia or lung fever, and what we call colds 
are caught in exactly the same way. We used to 
think we caught them by being chilled; but we 
are much more likely to take them by being shut 
up in a hot, stuffy room with other people who 
already have them. Mother Nature never gave 
us such things in her beautiful, clean outdoors. 
We must wear clothes enough to keep us warm 
when we go out, and have bedclothes enough to 
keep us warm while we sleep ; but we need not be 
afraid of catching any sickness from the clean 
outside air, either by day or by night. Drafts 



u6 "ABSENT TO-DAY?" 

are not dangerous, except when our blood is 
already full of poisons and germs from foul air. 

Of course it is foolish even for strong, healthy 
people to run any risks that can be avoided, and 
there is one other thing that you should keep on 
the watch against doing; and that is, touching 
or kissing or playing with other children who may 
be sick. It is better not even to sit in the same 
room with them if you can avoid it. 

Many of the infectious diseases — and nearly 
three fourths of all the diseases that children 
have are infectious — are caught, as we have 
seen, from germs that are carried in the air. That 
is one reason why so many infectious diseases are 
likely to begin with running at the nose, or 
sneezing, or cold in the head, or sore throat. The 
germs, having been breathed in with the air, 
catch on the sides of the nostrils or at the back 
of the throat, and start inflammation and sore- 
ness wherever they land . This is j ust the way that 
measles, scarlet fever, chicken pox, whooping cough, 
and diphtheria begin. Nearly all colds in the head, 
and sore throats with coughing, are infectious; 
so the best thing to do whenever you have a bad 
cold in the head, or a sore throat, is to keep out 
in the open air as much as you can, until it is 
better. Of course, a cold is not such a serious 



SOME FOES TO FIGHT 117 

thing in itself; but, if it is neglected, it may lead 
to some very dangerous troubles, particularly to 
inflammation of the lungs, and sometimes even 
of the kidneys or the liver or the heart. Several 
of these infectious diseases — measles, chicken 
pox, and scarlet fever, for instance — have a 
rash, or breaking-out, called an eruption, upon 
the skin. This is another thing easy to look out 
for; and if you see anyone with a rash upon his 
face and hands, it is a good thing to keep away 
from him and not let him touch you. Even if he 
should not have measles or scarlet fever or 
chicken pox, but only a disease of the skin itself, 
he still might spread the infection of that; for 
most diseases that cause a breaking-out upon the 
surface of the skin are infectious. 

Some of these infectious diseases are so com- 
mon among children that they are called Chil- 
dren's Diseases, or the Diseases of Infancy, just 
as if it were natural for you to have them while 
you are children, and as if they were something 
that you have to have as a matter of course, be- 
fore you grow up. 

But it is n't necessary at all to have them, if 
you will take care of yourselves and help your 
doctors and the Board of Health of your county 
or town or city to prevent their spreading. These 



u8 "ABSENT TO-DAY? " 

diseases, although usually very mild, never do 
anyone any good whatever, and may do serious 
harm; for their poisons may stay in the blood 
and injure the heart or the kidneys or the nerves. 

One thing I should like to urge you to do if you 
happen to get one of these "children's diseases' 
and that is, to stay in bed or out of school or 
away from work just as long as your doctor tells 
you to. This is important, because it is very 
dangerous indeed to become over-tired or over- 
heated or chilled, or to get your feet wet or romp 
too hard or sit up too late, before you have fully 
recovered ; and you will not have fully recovered 
until at least three or four weeks after you are 
able to be out of bed. But if you take good care 
of yourselves for three or four weeks after measles 
or chicken pox or whooping cough or a very bad 
cold, you will avoid almost all danger of their 
poisons injuring your heart or kidneys or nerves, 
and causing chronic diseases, like Bright's dis- 
ease or heart disease, later in life. 

Perhaps now I have told you enough about 
poisons and sickness. You must not be frightened 
about them. I have told you these things so that 
you may understand why you must bathe, and 
brush your teeth, and wash your face and hands, 
and wear clean clothes, and breathe fresh air, 



PROTECTING OUR FRIENDS 119 

and keep your windows open, and play out of 
doors — in fact, keep your bodies clean inside 
and out. I know you will be glad enough to do 




Photograph by Mary K. Taylor, North Cambridge, Mass. 

ENJOYING "ALL OUTDOORS" 
Very discouraging to disease germs! 

these things, troublesome though some of them 
may be, if you know the reason why. The best 
of it is that when you keep perfectly clean and 
healthy, even the germs of colds or of the " Great 
White Plague' ' do not hurt you so easily, though 
they may get into your mouth or nose; for 
healthy bodies have the power of killing many 
germs, quite without our knowing it. 

III. PROTECTING OUR FRIENDS 

If you knew that some of your little friends 
were sick with an infectious disease like measles 



120 " ABSENT TO-DAY? " 

or scarlet fever, of course you would keep away 
from them, so as to avoid catching the disease. 
And if they knew that they had a disease that 
was infectious, of course they would want to let 
all their friends know of it, so as to prevent them 
from coming and catching it. But how can they 
let all their friends know? Sick people don't feel 
like writing letters; and, even if they did, some 
diseases can be carried in letters. So that might 
not be at all a friendly thing to do. 

This has always been the, greatest difficulty 
in preventing the spread of infectious diseases — 
how to let other people know. So about fifty or 
sixty years ago, people got together and de- 
cided that the best thing to do was to appoint an 
officer known as a Health Officer, or a committee 
known as a Board of Health, in each town and in 
each county, whose business it should be to find 
out cases of infectious disease, and to warn other 
people against them. 

These officers first ask all the doctors in the 
town to report to this Central Health Office, or 
Board of Health, every case of a patient with an 
infectious disease. Then, when the case has been 
reported, that office sends some one with a card 
on which the name of the disease is printed in 
large letters, and he tacks the card upon the front 



PROTECTING OUR FRIENDS 121 

of the house or upon the fence around the lot, so 
that everyone who goes near the house may know 



DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH 
THE CITY OF NEW YORK. 

All persons entering this building are hereby notified that 



NAME- 
FLOOR, 
is ill with 



SCARLET FEVER 

This notice to be removed only by a representative of the 

Department of Health* 

By order of the 
Date BOARD OF HEALTH. 



ONE WAY IN WHICH THE BOARD OF HEALTH PROTECTS US 

that there is danger, and keep away from it. 
Then, sometimes, a messenger from the Board of 
Health goes into the house and talks to the fam- 
ily, and tells them how they can keep the patient 
in a room by himself, so as to prevent the rest of 
the family from catching the disease; and how 
they can best take care of the patient, and keep 
from carrying the infection through clothing or 
food or anything else. 

Then, because anyone who has been sick with 
an infectious disease will still be shedding the 
germs of the disease and spitting or coughing, 



122 " ABSENT TO-DAY? " 

not only as long as he is sick, but for two or three 
weeks after he is beginning to feel better, the 
messenger will tell the family that the patient 
must stay either in his own room or within his 
own house or yard, for so many days or weeks. 
This is called keeping quarantine. The word 
comes from the Italian word quaranta, "forty"; 
because in the early days when the practice was 
first begun, the patients used to be kept by them- 
selves in this way for forty days. While some- 
times this is very inconvenient and hard and 
troublesome, it is really the only safe way of 
stopping the spread of these diseases; and I am 
sure anyone of you would be willing to take this 
extra trouble sooner than let any of your friends 
catch a disease from you, and perhaps die of it. 
Quarantine is also the best and safest thing for 
the patient, because it keeps him quiet and at 
rest until he has completely recovered, and until 
all danger that the poison of the disease will 
attack his lungs or heart or kidneys is over. 

In some of the best schools now there is an 
examination of all the children every morning, 
by a visiting doctor sent by the Board of Health. 
If the doctor finds any child that has red and 
watery eyes, or is running at the nose, or sneezing, 
or coughing, or has a sore throat, he usually sends 



PROTECTING OUR FRIENDS 123 

him home at once, so that the other children will 
not catch the infection. The school doctor is not 
thinking only about what seems to be a cold, 
although, as you know, it is very important that 
anyone with a cold should take good care of him- 
self and should not let others catch it from him. 
The doctor sends the child home because this is 
just the way in which several other infectious 
diseases may begin — measles, scarlet fever, chicken 
pox, whooping cough, and diphtheria. For most 
infectious diseases, as you will remember, are 
caught from germs floating in the air and 
breathed into the nose and throat. 

The Board of Health takes care of the public 
in many ways besides these. It keeps a very 
careful watch upon the water supply of the town, 
or city, so as to keep the houses and factories 
from running their drainage, or sewage, into it; 
for this, as you already know, might cause the 
spread of typhoid fever and of other diseases of 
the bowels and stomach. 

The Board of Health sends men to examine, 
or inspect, the milk the dairymen bring, to see 
that it is sweet and pure, and that there are no 
infectious germs in it. And it sends men out into 
the country to examine the dairy farms and see 
that the cows are properly fed, and that the barns 



124 "ABSENT TO-DAY?" 

in which they are milked are kept clean ; and that 
the water in which the milk pans and bottles are 
washed comes from clean, pure wells or springs. 




Courtesy, Baby Milk and Hygiene Association, Boston, Mas$ t 

WHAT MILK INSPECTION MEANS 

Clean barns, cows, pails, and milkers mean clean milk. The cows here stand in 
fresh, clean sawdust. 

Another thing that the Board of Health does 
is to send an inspector round to look very care* 
fully at all the meat that is sold in the butcher 
shops, and at all the fruits and vegetables at the 
grocers'. If he finds any meat that is diseased or 
tainted or bad, or any fruit or vegetables that are 
beginning to spoil, or any flour, sugar, or canned 
goods that have been mixed with cheaper stuffs 
that are not good to eat, — in fact, are what the 



PROTECTING OUR FRIENDS 125 

law calls adulterated, ■ — he may seize the bad 
and dangerous foods and destroy them, and sum- 
mon to court the dealers who are trying to sell 
them. Then the dealers are fined or perhaps sent 
to prison. 

So, you see, the Board of Health is one of the 
very best friends that you have, trying to keep 
your food pure and good, the water that you 
drink clean and wholesome, and the milk sweet 
and free from dirt or disease germs. You ought 
to help these officers and their inspectors in every 
way that you can. I know that it is sometimes 
troublesome to obey all their rules; and perhaps 
when you don't know what the dangers are which 
they are trying to guard you against, it seems to 
you that they are too particular about a great 
many things. But just see what they have done 
already to make our cities and houses healthier 
and pleasanter places to live in. 

Only one hundred and fifty years ago, for 
instance, that terrible disease called smallpox 
killed hundreds of thousands of people every 
year in Europe; and it attacked the eyes and 
blinded so many of those who recovered from it, 
that nearly half the poor blind people in the 
blind asylums had had their sight destroyed by 
it. In smallpox there is a terrible eruption, or 



126 "ABSENT TO-DAY? " 

breaking out, upon the skin, which is likely to 
leave it pitted and scarred ; and even fifty years 
ago it was exceedingly common to see people who 
had been pitted by smallpox, or, as the expression 
was, " pock-marked/ ' 

Cows have a disease somewhat like this, but 
much less dangerous, called cow-pox. Years ago, 
before dairies were inspected as they are now, 
dairy maids often caught this disease from the 
cows they milked, so that their hands would 
break out with pock-marks. 

About a hundred years ago, a Dr. Richard 
Jenner discovered that the dairy maids in the 
country district in which he lived, who had 
caught this mild infection from the cows they 
milked, never caught smallpox even when they 
were exposed to it. So after studying over the 
subject for some years, he took a little of the 
matter, or pus, from the eruption on the udder 
of a cow that had cow-pox, scratched the arm of a 
little patient of his, and rubbed some of the pus 
into it. Only a short time after, the family of this 
little boy was exposed to smallpox, and all the 
other children took it badly, but he escaped. 

This was the beginning of what we call vac- 
cination; and as soon as it was found that this 
scratching of the arm and putting a little of this 



PROTECTING OUR FRIENDS 127 

vaccine matter into it would cause only a few days 
of feverishness, and then after that give complete 
protection against smallpox, the Boards of Health 
all over the civilized world took it up and insisted 
upon everybody's being vaccinated when a baby. 

As a result, smallpox has become one of the 
rarest, instead of the commonest, of our infec- 
tious diseases. Only a few dozen people die of it 
each year in Europe, instead of several hundred 
thousands; scarcely one one-hundredth of the 
people now in our blind asylums have been sent 
there by smallpox, and I dare say that many of 
you have never even seen a pock-marked person. 

Another disease that used to be very dangerous 
to little children is diphtheria. It was not only 
very infectious, but very deadly; and nearly half 
of the children who took it died of it, and the 
doctors did n't know anything that would cure 
it. About twenty years ago, two great scientists, 
one a Frenchman named Roux — a student of 
the great Professor Louis Pasteur, of whom I am 
sure you have heard — and the other, a German, 
named Behring, discovered an antitoxin for 
diphtheria; that is, something to defeat the poison 
of the diphtheria germ. When this antitoxin is 
injected into the blood, it will cure diphtheria. 

The doctors and the Boards of Health took 



128 " ABSENT TO-DAY?" 

this up too, and insisted upon its being used in all 
cases; with the result that where the antitoxin is 
used early, scarcely one in twenty of the patients 
dies, instead of eight or ten out of twenty, as before. 

You know how careful we are all trying to be 
not to let consumption spread. By insisting that 
all houses shall be built so as to give plenty of 
light and fresh air to everyone; and by forbid- 
ding spitting upon the streets; and by insisting 
that food to be sold, especially milk, shall be 
clean, — by preventing the spread of the dis- 
ease in every way, our Boards of Health have cut 
down the number of deaths from this disease 
nearly one half; and people in the United States, 
for instance, or in England, where these health 
laws are enforced, live now almost exactly twice 
as long on the average as they did one hundred 
years ago, or as they do now in India and in 
Turkey, for instance, where the people are igno- 
rant and dirty and careless. 

So you see that even if some of the health 
regulations do seem rather troublesome and 
fussy, it is well worth while to try to follow them 
and help the health inspectors in every way. 
Even little children can help very much in keep- 
ing the houses and the cities in which they live 
clean and healthful and beautiful. 






WORK AND PLAY 



I. GROWING STRONG 

When school is over, out you go with a rush, 
into the open air. You have worked hard all 
day, and now you have two hours before supper 
to do just as you like. 

Perhaps you will play tag, or prisoner's base, 
or stealing sticks, or town ball. They are all fine 
fun, and they exercise every 
muscle in your body and 
make your lungs breathe 
deeper and your heart beat 
faster, and make every part 
of you grow stronger. 

Perhaps you have a few 
chores to do or errands to 
run ; but even these are al- 
most as much fun as play 
and give you good exercise 
in the open air and, what 
is better still, a feeling that 
you are being of some use 
in the world, which is one of the happiest and 



? 



i 




BETTER TO TAKE THAN 
MEDICINE 



GROWING STRONG 131 

most satisfactory feelings that you will ever 
have, if you live to be a hundred years old. 

But when you have finished your work, you 
must not forget to play real, lively, jolly games 
out of doors — ball and tag and hide-and-seek, 
and all those games that children love. 

Hide-and-seek is a good game, because, when 
you are caught, you can stand still a few minutes 
and rest. When you are hiding, you can take a 
good breath for the home-run you have to make. 
Most games, in fact, are planned like this — a 
run and a rest, and then another run. While you 
rest, some one else is taking his turn at the bat, 
or at being "It," or whatever is the hardest 
part of the work. This is one reason why games 
are so good for you to play. 

You see, when you run, you are working your 
muscles and heart-pump very hard; and if you 
kept running all the time, you would burn up so 
much food in the muscles that the heart could n't 
pump blood fast enough to wash away all the 
waste, and would just chug-chug-chug till it 
tired itself out. When you are tired, it is time to 
stop and rest; for being tired means that the 
poisons are not being carried away from the 
muscles fast enough, and that your heart is 
working too hard. 



132 



WORK AND PLAY 



What is it in your 
body that gives it 
stiffening to stand 
upright, and makes 
levers in your legs 
and arms to move it 
about? When you feel 
your body and arms 
and head with your 
fingers, what are they 
like? Is n't there 
something hard and 
then a soft kind of 
pad over it? We call 
the hard things bones. 
Your teacher will 
show you some. These 
are white and chalky 
looking; but when they 
were alive, they were 
a beautiful pinkish 
white color. 

So you have a pretty 
pearl - colored frame- 
work, the shape of your 
body. This, which is called your skeleton, makes 
you stiff enough to stand up and walk about* 




SKELETON OF A MAN 



GROWING STRONG 133 

Now bend your arm and turn your wrist and 
open and close your hand. You find that your 
frame-work is jointed. When you are tired stand- 
ing, you can bend your joints and sit down. If 




THE MUSCLES OF THE ARM 



you want an apple, you can close your fingers 
and pick it up. 

What are the soft pads that you felt over the 
bones of your arms 
and legs? Stretch your 
right arm straight out 
in front of you and 
take hold of the upper 
part of it with your 
left hand. Now clench 
your right fist and 
bring it toward your 
shoulder. Can you 
feel the elastic pads, or 

bands, moving? What are they doing? They 
are pulling your hand up to your shoulder. 




WHEN THE MUSCLES SHORTEN 



134 WORK AND PLAY 

When you walk, you can feel the elastic bands 
moving your legs along. So every move we 
make, these elastic ropes are at work pulling us 
about and letting us sit down and making us 
run and jump. We call them muscles. 

You have perhaps seen jointed dolls. The 
strings and rubber bands on their joints help to 
make them move; but the dolls don't act as if 
they were alive. They have no telephone system 
to tell their bodies how to move. 

If you will stop and think how many " moves' 
you make in a day, you'll know how hard your 
muscles have to work. They'd be quite tired 
out if they did not have plenty to feed on all the 
time and did not rest at least nine hours a day. 
I told you how the food is melted and carried 
about in the blood. It is the blood that brings 
the muscles their food and keeps them alive and 
makes them strong enough to move the joints 
and the bones. 

What does all this playing do for you? It 
makes you grow not only big, but strong, too. 
What puny little things you'd be if you could n't 
get out and run and play and make your muscles 
strong and your nerves do just what you tell 
them to do. 

I know of ten or twelve little chickens that 



GROWING STRONG 135 

hatched a few weeks ago. There are so many 
cats about, that the poor little chicks have to be 
shut up in the barn all day. At first they ran and 
played and jumped on their mother's back, but 
now they hump their shoulders and hang their 
heads and don't seem hungry and look sad and 
sick. They are not so big as some that hatched 
later. Can you tell me why? Of course you can. 
You know that it is outdoor exercise and play 
that chickens need, and that you need to make 
you grow big and strong, too. Of course, you 
will have to keep your backbone straight and 
your chest out and your head up ; but all these 
things will be easy for you if you are perfectly 
well and strong. 

The school tries to take just as good care of 
your health and growth as it can. Your lessons 
are short, and you change from one to another 
frequently, with perhaps drills or calisthenic 
exercises between, so that you need not sit still 
too long at a time ; and the seats and desks are of 
different sizes so that you need not sit at a desk 
that does not fit you. When your teacher urges 
you to go out of doors and play at recess time, 
even if you do not want to, you must think to 
yourself, "It will rest me and make me grow big 
and straight and strong/ ' 



i36 



WORK AND PLAY 



When you come home from school, go out of 
doors and stay out just as long as you can. Don't 
let dolls or toys or picture books tempt you to 
stay in the house. The pictures out of doors are 
ever so much prettier, as soon as you learn to see 
them. But some of you live in crowded cities. 
I hope you are near a park or a playground, 
where you can have a good romp with other chil- 
dren, and use the swings and see-saws and bars, 




Courtesy, Department of Child Hygiene, Russell Sage Foundation 

A SKATING POND MADE OUT OF A GARDEN 
The school garden is flooded in winter — a fine place to skate right after school. 

and the skating pond in winter, and the swim- 
ming pool in summer. 

What fun swimming is! You can learn easily 
if you have a safe place and an older person to 
teach you the stroke. You can roll over on your 
back in the water, and ^oat, and dive; but you 



ACCIDENTS 



137 



must not stay in longer than twenty minutes, 

and not so long as 

that sometimes. As 

soon as you begin | 

to feel chilly, come 

out. Swimming 

not only cleans 

your skin, but is 

splendid exercise 

for your lungs and 

muscles. 

All this play out 
of doors will help 
your appetite, and 
that will make 
you ready to eat 
the right kind of 
food, and this food 
will get into your blood and keep your muscles 
firm and strong. 




Courtesy, Trinity Parish Seaside Home 

SPLENDID EXERCISE FOR LUNGS 
AND MUSCLES 



II. ACCIDENTS 

I am going to tell you what to do in the case 
of some of the little accidents that may happen 
to anyone, and especially of the kind that chil- 
dren meet with in playing; but I don't want you 
to stop playing for fear you'll be hurt. Mother 



138 



WORK AND PLAY 



Nature can usually heal all the bumps and cuts 
and scratches that come from wholesome play. 

You can, however, help her very much by 
keeping the scratch or cut perfectly clean. This 
is the chief thing to remember. Wash it thor- 
oughly in clean water. Hold it under the pump, 
or faucet, and let the water pour down on it. 

If you can, pour some antiseptic, or germ killer, 
over the cut, and wrap it up in a clean cloth. 
There is a medicine called peroxid of hydrogen, 
which is good for cuts and wounds, but an older 
person will have to put it on for you. 

If the scratch is from a finger 
nail or the claw of a cat, or if 
the wound is the bite of some 
animal, you must be sure to 
have your mother or a doctor 
clean the wound with strong 
medicine. You see, nails and 
claws and teeth are, as a rule, 
dirty, and have on them germs 
that will get into the cut and 
make it swell and be very sore 
indeed. 

Sometime you may have a cut 
that is deep. You will see the bright red blood 
spurt from it. This means that you have cut one 




THE TIGHT BANDAGE 

HIGHER THAN THE 

CUT 



ACCIDENTS i 39 

of the blood pipes called arteries. If the cut is on 
the arm or the leg, you should take a cloth or 
bandage and tie it tightly around the arm or leg 
above the cut ; and if that does not check the blood, 
put a piece of stick under the cloth and twist the 
stick, as in the picture. For a cut like this you 
must get help as soon as possible, and keep quiet, 
or else you will increase the flow of blood. 

If you get anything in your eye, be sure not 
to rub the eye; don't even wink hard if you can 
help it. You will only make the pain worse, be- 
cause you will scratch the eyeball. Let some one 
take out the bit of dust or the cinder or the fly, 
or whatever it is, as quickly as possible. Often, 
if you close the lids gently and hold them so, the 
tears will wash the speck down for you. 

If you should bruise yourself, the best way to 
treat the bruise is to pour either quite cold or 
quite warm water over it, and keep this up for 
several minutes; or to put it into a bowl of hot 
water. Then tie it up in a bandage of soft cotton 
cloth or gauze and pour over it a lotion containing 
a little alcohol — about one sixth or one fourth. 
This, by evaporating, cools off the bruise and 
relieves the pain. 

If your ear, or nose, or a finger should happen 
to be frozen or frost bitten, the best thing to do 



140 WORK AND PLAY 

is to rub it hard with snow until it thaws out and 
becomes pink again. Above all, don't go too 
near the fire, and don't go into a very warm room 
too soon. 

If you get one of those uncomfortable itchy 
swellings on your feet called chilblains, which 
come from cold floors in your houses, or from wet 
feet, or from wearing too thin shoes and stock- 
ings, don't put your feet too near the fire, but 
rub them well with turpentine just before going 
to bed at night. This will often take all the pain 
and itching out of them. 

Sometimes people make the mistake of drink- 
ing something that is poisonous. Of course, one 
good way to prevent this is to have every bottle in 
the house carefully marked and never to take 
anything from a bottle without reading the 
mark, or label. Another good way is not to have 
poisons about any more than we actually need to. 

Still, even so, sometimes a mistake is made. 
If you ever make such a mistake, the best thing 
to do is to drink as much warm water as you can, 
and into the second cupful to put a tablespoonful 
of dry mustard or two heaping tablespoonfuls of 
salt. This will make you vomit, and up will come 
the poison. The water makes the poison weaker. 
If this does n't make you throw up the poison, 



ACCIDENTS i 4I 

have some one tickle the back of your throat 
with a feather. There are a great many kinds of 
poison and as many things to take to cure them ; 
but this is the only remedy I shall tell you about, 
because, by the time you have tried this, some 
older person will probably have come to help you. 

All the medicines that you see advertised as 
" Headache Cures' ' are dangerous poisons if 
taken in too large doses; and most of them in 
small doses weaken the heart. They are what we 
call narcotics; they just deaden the nerves to 
pain without doing anything whatever to relieve 
or remove the cause. 

If you have a headache, the best thing to do 
is to go and lie down quietly and rest or sleep, 
until it goes away. A headache always means 
that something is wrong; it is one of Nature's 
most valuable danger signals. When your head 
aches, Nature is telling you that you have been 
over-straining your eyes, or breathing foul air, or 
eating some food that does not agree with you, or 
forgetting to go to the toilet regularly, or not get- 
ting sleep enough. The sensible thing to do is not 
to swallow some medicine to deaden your nerves 
to the pain, but to find out what you have been 
doing that is unhealthful for you, and then stop it. 

Most of the medicines called " patent medi- 



142 WORK AND PLAY 

cines," which are advertised to "cure" all sorts 
of pains and troubles, contain poisons, and are 
particularly dangerous because they easily lead 
one to form the habit of taking them. Nine 
tenths of them are either absolute frauds, — of 
no strength or use whatever, — or else they con- 
tain alcohol, or opium, or some of the dangerous 
drugs made out of coal tar. 

Now about burns. You need not wash them, 
because the heat has killed the troublesome 
germs. They need to be covered from the air, 
if the blister is broken. Cover them thickly with 
olive oil or vaseline, or common baking soda 
mixed with a few drops of water. This makes 
a good paste to put over them, and it will ease 
the pain. (This is the way to treat a wasp or bee 
sting, too, after you have pulled out the 
" stinger. ") If the blister of the burn is not 
broken, just keep putting vaseline or sweet oil 
on it every half hour or so, and the blister won't 
break; for the oil will make it limber and prevent 
it from bursting. 

If ever your clothes should catch fire, do not 
run; the wind you make will only fan the flames, 
so that they burn faster. Lie down and roll over 
and over, as fast as you can. If there is a rug or a 
quilt handy, wrap yourself up tight in it. My 



ACCIDENTS 143 

youngest brother once saved a little child's life 
this way. He was not very old, but he remem- 
bered to put the child on the floor and roll him 
up in a rug. 

However, the best way to prevent accidents 
with fire is to let fire and lamps and matches and 
kerosene and sparklers and firecrackers alone. 

I am so glad that people are becoming sensible 
about keeping our nation's birthday, the Fourth 
of July, and are doing away with the firecrackers 
that have killed so many thousands of children. 
The burns you get from firecrackers are much 
more dangerous than other burns. A dirt-germ 
often gets into them that may cause lockjaw. 
The name tells what it is: it locks the jaws to- 
gether so that its victim cannot eat; and, of 
course, if he cannot eat, he cannot live very long. 
Next Fourth of July try getting flags and bunt- 
ing and drums and horns, if you like, instead of 
these dangerous fireworks. 

In keeping the Fourth one year not long ago, 
one hundred and seventy-one children lost one or 
more fingers; forty-one lost a leg, an arm, or a 
hand; thirty-six lost one eye, and sixteen lost 
both eyes ; and two hundred and fifteen children 
were killed! This accounts for only the children; 
counting everybody, five thousand three hundred 



144 



WORK AND PLAY 




and seven people were killed or hurt. No wonder 

we begin to think that we ought to keep the 

Fourth in some other way. 

In the City of Washington, on one Fourth of 

July, one hundred and 
four people were taken 
to the hospital ; but the 
following year when 
no fireworks were al- 
lowed to be sold, the 
hospitals did not have 

a result of celebrating the a single patient from the 

FOURTH IN THE OLD WAY 

accidents of the day. 

Water, as well as fire, has its dangers. If you 
ever fall into the water, be sure to keep your 
mouth shut and your hands below your chin. 
Then paddle with your hands gently, and you '11 
swim, just as any other young animal does when 
first thrown into the water. Even your cat, who 
hates water, can swim easily when she falls in. 
If you keep your wits as she does, you will get 
along as well. Some people learn to swim just 
by trying by themselves. 

If anyone in your party, when you are out 
boating or swimming, should be nearly drowned, 
the best way to revive him is to lay him, as 
quickly as possible, flat on his face on level 



ACCIDENTS 



145 



wuwmj^, 



ground, just turning his head a little to one side 
so that his nose and mouth will not be blocked. 
Then, kneeling astride of his legs, put both 
your hands on the 

small of his back ^^#|? 

and press down- 
ward with all your 
weight while you 
count three. This 
squeezes the ab- 
domen and the 
lower part of the 
chest so as to drive 
the air out of the 
lungs. Then swing 
backward so as to 
take the weight 
off your hands, 
while you count three again ; and then swing for- 
ward again and press down, again forcing the 
air out of the lungs. Keep up this swing-pump- 
ing about ten or fifteen times a minute for at 
least ten or fifteen minutes, unless the person 
begins to breathe of himself before this. Don't 
waste any time trying to hold him up by the 
feet, or roll him over a barrel so as to get the 
water out of his lungs. Just turn him over on his 




WORKING TO START HIS BREATHING 
AGAIN 



146 WORK AND PLAY 

face as quickly as possible and get to work mak- 
ing a weight-pump of yourself on his back. 

If there is any life left in the body at all whea 
it is taken out of the water, you will succeed in 
saving it. It is very seldom, however, that any- 
one who has been under water more than five 
minutes can be revived. 

And now the thing that I want you to be sure 
to remember, I have saved for the last. No mat- 
ter what kind of accident happens, keep your 
wits about you and keep cool. Be calm and 
think what it is best to do, instead of letting your- 
self be frightened. Of course, get some one to 
help you as soon as you can and, if need be r 
call for help as loud as your lungs will let you. 
But use that wonderful " phone' ' system to send 
in and out the messages that will help you to 
help yourself by telling your muscles what to do. 

III. THE CITY BEAUTIFUL 

One morning I stopped a moment on the street 
to speak to a friend. Her little nephew had just 
finished eating some candy, and down went his 
candy-bag on the pavement. His aunt happened 
to see it. "Oh, no, Claude, " she said, "don't you 
see the big green can there? Better put it into 
that." But Claude was only three years old; and 



THE CITY BEAUTIFUL 147 

the can was so tall that he could not tell what it 
was, till we led him up to it. 

Do you have cans like these in your town, too? 
It is good to think that every one of us, even 
such little fellows as Claude, can help to keep the 
city beautiful. But it is not simply to make things 
look nice that we have so many cans — cans for 
ashes, cans for papers, cans for food scraps. No 
indeed, it is to keep the city clean and make it 
fit for people to live in; for if dirty papers and 
scraps were left to blow about the streets, they 
would fill the air with germs and filth. 

Any dust that blows about the streets is likely 
to be carrying disease germs with it. That is why 
we have sprinklers driven through the streets to 
wet them and to keep down the dust; and why, 
in large cities, the streets are thoroughly flooded 
at night. If the streets are kept damp and clean, 
then the air above them is cool and fresh and pure. 

How does the city get rid of all the dirt and 
waste? From every house there are two kinds of 
waste. Some is taken away in pipes from the 
sink and bathroom out into pipes that run under 
the street, and these carry it away from the city 
to some stream or deep water that takes it 
entirely away from the town. 

The waste stuffs that are not watery, but 



148 WORK AND PLAY 

solid — cabbage leaves, apple cores, potato 
parings, and other scraps from the kitchen are 
carted away and burned or fed to pigs. The 
ashes and tin cans are carted away, also, and used 
in making new land or filling up hollow places. 

Besides taking away the dirt, cities are careful 
to get clear, pure drinking water. They are very, 
very careful about this; and they usually have 
the water tested often, because, as you have 
learned, even water that looks perfectly pure 
may give people typhoid fever. That is why, 
when you are out in the country, on a picnic per- 
haps, you must not drink from the streams. 
They may receive the drainage from a farmer's 
barnyard, or the sewage from some house. 

The more we all learn about these things, the 
more careful will the city be to protect her people. 
To be sure, most cities now have Boards of 
Health who employ men and women to go about 
and see that the food in the stores is clean — no 
flies, no dust, and no tobacco smoke on it. They 
have laws, too, about keeping milk clean; and 
in New York alone these laws have saved the 
lives of thousands of babies. And they have laws 
about the care of streets and buildings and cars 
and parks and a great many other things. 

In all these things we have been talking about, 



THE CITY BEAUTIFUL 149 

1 want you to be thinking how you can help. 
For a city is made up of people — boys and girls 
and men and women. The city is what its people 
make it; and everyone must help, even the small- 
est children, no older than little Claude. 

The first and most important thing for you to 
do is to keep yourself clean and tidy. And the 
next thing is for you to keep your back yard as 
well as your front yard and the school yard and 
the street free from papers and sticks and cans 
and old playthings. You can put away your 
things when you are through playing ; or, if you 
are making a railroad or a town or a playhouse, 
you can leave it looking nice and tidy. You can 
help chiefly by putting away your own things. 
You know the old saying, "A workman is known 
by his chips"; and a good workman always 
works in an orderly way. 

When you eat apples or bananas or oranges, 
don't throw the skins or peelings about, but put 
them in a garbage can or swill bucket or cover 
them with soft dirt in the garden or stable yard ; 
and don't throw peanut shells, or scraps of paper 
and the like, about the streets or parks. You 
should begin to notice all these things and talk 
about them, and that will make other people 
begin to think about them, too. 



150 WORK AND PLAY 

Then you can make gardens instead of leaving 
bare, untidy back yards. I think that nicely kept 
vegetable gardens are almost as pretty as flower 
gardens. If you cannot mow the lawn, you can 
at least cut the long grass on the edges; and 
that makes such a difference! It is wonderful 
how much boys and girls can do in making and 
keeping a city really beautiful. 

I hope that you have plenty of room to play 
in now. Of course, when you grow up, you will 
see that there are plenty of playgrounds and 
parks for the children. We are beginning to find 
out that the richest and the most beautiful city 
is the one whose streets are lined with families 
of happy, rosy-cheeked children. So, you see, 
the "City Beautiful' ' is the one that takes best 
care of her children, and she can do this only by 
keeping her streets and houses perfectly clean 
and seeing that the food her people get is fresh 
and good, and their drinking water pure. If the 
city or town you live in is not like this, be sure 
you do your very best to make it better. 

There is one great evil that for hundreds and 
hundreds of years has been known wherever 
people are crowded together, and even in the 
open country, too; and which has been the cause 
of more untidiness and uncleanliness and unhap- 




Courtesy, Tkj. Ladies' 1 Home Journal 

WOULD YOU RATHER HAVE A BACK YARD LIKE THIS ? 



.— v 4 


^iifflBBHi 


rm—m ''"if jj !. - - 







Courtesy \ The Ladies' Home Journal 



OR LIKE THIS? 



152 WORK AND PLAY 

piness and disease than any other evil ever known. 
And that is the drinking of alcohol. People don't 
drink clear alcohol, but they can get a great deal 
of it — enough to poison them badly — in the fer- 
mented drinks you learned about some time ago. 

In the days when your grandfather was a 
little boy, every man thought that ale and wine 
and whiskey were good foods for him when he 
was well; and good medicine when he was sick. 
He believed that they gave him an appetite^ 
and increased his strength. But now we have 
found, by carefully studying the effects of alco- 
hol, in laboratories and in hospitals, that these 
beliefs were almost entirely mistaken. We know 
that all that wine, beer, and whiskey do is to 
make people feel better for a little while, without 
making them actually stronger or better in any 
way. In fact, in most respects these drinks make 
them weaker and worse instead. 

Perhaps you will ask, "How do whiskey and 
wine and beer do us harm?" And here is only 
part of the answer: (i) They tire the heart and, 
by enlarging the blood pipes in the skin, make the 
heart pump too much of the blood out to the 
skin. In this way they make a person feel warmer 
when he really is not any warmer. (2) They 
make the liver work too hard. (3) They dull the 



THE CITY BEAUTIFUL 153 

brain, so that it cannot think so clearly or so 
well. (4) If one drinks them frequently, it is 
harder for him to get well when he is sick; more 
people die out of those who drink alcohol than 
out of those who do not. 

Alcohol is a narcotic; that is, it deadens our 
nerves, for the time being, to any sensations of 
pain or discomfort, much in the same way that a 
very small dose of morphine or opium would. 
We may imagine it does us good because, for a 
little while after drinking it, we may cease to feel 
pain or fatigue or cold; but, instead of making 
us really better and able to do more work, it is 
dulling our nerves so that we work more slowly 
and more clumsily. Men who have carefully 
measured the amount of work that they do have 
found that they do less work on days when they 
take one or two glasses of beer or wine than 
they do on days when they drink only water. 

The great insurance companies have found that 
those of their policy holders who drink no alcohol 
at all live nearly one fourth longer and have 
nearly one third fewer sicknesses than those who 
drink alcohol even in moderate amounts. 

Indeed, so strong has been the evidence as to 
the bad effects of alcohol and so steadily has this 
evidence increased, that a law has been passed to 



154 WORK AND PLAY 

prevent liquor which will do harm from being 
made or sold at all in our country, or imported 
from abroad. 

Strong, healthy men may be able for a long 
time to drink small amounts of liquor without 
noticing any harmful effects ; but all the time the 
alcohol may be doing serious harm to their nerves 
and brain and kidneys and liver and blood ves- 
sels, which they will not find out until it is too 
late to stop the trouble. 

Useless and bad as alcohol is for full-grown 
men and women, it is even worse for young and 
growing children; and no child, and no boy or 
girl under the age of twenty-one, should ever 
touch a drop of it, except in those rare instances 
where it may be prescribed as a medicine by a 
doctor, just as many other drugs are, which in 
larger doses would be poisons. 

Fortunately, it will be no trouble for you chil- 
dren to let it alone entirely; for not one of you 
would like the taste of it the first time — or, 
indeed, for the matter of that, for the first ten 
or twelve times — that you tried to drink it, if 
you should be so foolish. This is one striking 
difference between alcohol and all other foods 
and drinks. Children have absolutely no natural 
liking, or taste, for the drinks that contain it, as 



THE CITY BEAUTIFUL 155 

they have for meat, milk, sugar, apples, and the 
other real foods. This is Nature's way of telling 
them that it is not a real food, and not needed 
in any way for their growth and health. Let it 
alone absolutely. Your mind and body will then 
be in better condition for working and for play- 
ing, than they would be if some one persuaded 
you to try the effect of alcoholic drink. 

What we have been saying so far applies, of 
course, only to the moderate use of alcohol. How 
terrible the effects of the long or excessive use of 
alcohol are, it is easy to show. In the poor- 
houses and the jails and the insane asylums 
there are many who have been ruined by alcohol. 
The most terrible thing that can happen to any- 
one is to become a drunkard. The best and 
safest and only sensible thing to do is to keep 
away from the only stuff that makes drunkards. 
It may do you the most terrible harm, and it 
cannot do you the slightest good. 

Your city cannot be the "City Beautiful, " 
unless this evil no longer mars it; and as you 
grow up, I hope you will do all you can toward 
making the right kind of city and home. It is 
the duty of all of us to assist in every way that 
we can in support of the new national law that 
enforces prohibition. 



THE EVENING MEAL 

When you have had some good games of play 
after school, and have finished whatever errands 
you may have to run, or have done the chores 
about the barn or the garden or the house, you 
will begin to feel as if there w T ere something miss- 
ing somewhere. It won't take you very long to 
discover where that missing feeling is; and when 
you hear a call from the house, or a ring of the 
bell in the hall, you come running in for supper. 
If you have worked well in school and played 
hard and done your chores well, you will have a 
splendid appetite. In fact, you will think there is 
no other meal in the day that tastes quite so good. 

Is your evening meal supper or dinner? If you 
have had a hot dinner at noon, you probably do 
not want anything more than a good supper. 
But if you had only luncheon, then you are ready 
to eat something hot and hearty about six o'clock. 

What are some of the things that you like for 
dinner? Meat and eggs and bread and butter 
and jam and rice and potatoes and onions and 
celery and cookies and apples and oranges and 
oh, so many, many other things! Mother Nature 



THE EVENING MEAL 157 

has given us all these good things, that we may 
have not only enough to eat but plenty of differ- 
ent kinds. We soon grow tired of one kind, and 
that is how she tells us that we need many kinds. 

When I was little, oranges were not so com- 
mon as they are now; and I never but once had 
as many as I wanted. That once, my father told 
me to eat all I liked, and I did; but for weeks 
afterwards I did n't want even to see an orange! 
Did you ever feel that way too, though perhaps 
not about oranges? Nature sometimes has to 
teach us not to eat too much of one kind at a time. 

Some people like one thing, and some another. 
Do all of you like onions? I think not; but those 
who do, like them very much. The same thing 
is true of tomatoes and sweet potatoes and red 
raspberries and oysters and many other things. 
But there are some things that almost every- 
body likes; and our grandfathers and great- 
grandfathers and great-great-grandfathers ate 
them. One of them is called the " staff of life" 
because we lean, or depend, on it so much; we 
have it for breakfast, dinner, and supper. That 
is bread, of course. Meat and eggs and milk and 
butter, too, are among the foods that we all like. 

These might be called our "main foods," and 
we should eat one or two or even three of them 



158 THE EVENING MEAL 

at each meal. Meat and milk and eggs and but- 
ter, animals give us. But these are not enough; 
we need besides some of the foods that plants 
give us, because, as I have told you, we need 
different kinds of food at one time to keep the 
body fires going briskly. 

What are some of the foods that plants give 
us? Bread is made from a plant — from wheat. 
Oatmeal comes from the oat plant ; and hominy, 
from corn. Some of our plant foods, such as 
potatoes, turnips, onions, sweet potatoes, pars- 
nips, and radishes, grow under ground. Some, 
such as peas and beans, grow on vines. Then 
there are lettuce and cabbage and celery. And 
there are fruits — cherries, apples, peaches, 
plums, pears, melons, tomatoes, berries. 

Nature has given us all these foods, and many 
more; and she wants us to use them all. She 
wants us to use, every day and every meal, some 
foods that come from plants and some that come 
from animals. 

A good dinner would be a slice of roast beef or 
mutton, a potato, a helping of some sort of vege- 
table like peas or beans or onions or tomatoes 
or celery; and a dish of milk pudding or apple 
dumpling, or stewed fruit with bread and butter, 
or pie that has only an upper crust or its under 




ONE OF THE HAPPIEST TIMES OF THE DAY 



160 THE EVENING MEAL 

crust very well baked. When you are eating 
bread, remember that the crusts are the very 
best part, because they are well cooked and really 
taste the best. They are good for your teeth, too. 

Perhaps, while I am talking about a good meal, 
I ought to talk a little about the way to eat and 
how to make mealtime pleasant. 

Of course, to make our food soft, we must 
take little bites, eat slowly, and chew each 
mouthful a long time. Be sure to remember this. 
So many of the children I know eat so fast that 
you'd think they had to catch a train! Did you 
ever see anyone try to talk and chew at the same 
time or forget to shut his mouth while he was 
chewing? Was n't it a very awkward, disagree- 
able sight? Think a moment, if you are tempted 
to talk with your mouth full, or put your knife 
into your mouth, or make a noise while you are 
eating, that these things are not pleasant for 
your neighbors. 

Do you tell funny stories at the table and talk 
about happy tramps you have taken or games 
you have played, or about your pets or your 
books? If you do, your food will do you more 
good, and you will be helping the other people 
at the table, too. Mealtimes should be the hap- 
piest times in the day. 



A PLEASANT EVENING 

When the supper things have been cleared 
away, you have two hours or so before going to 
bed, and I dare say you look forward to these 
as one of the pleasantest parts of the day. 

It is always best for you to take things rather 
easily and quietly and pleasantly for at least 
fifteen or twenty minutes after every meal; and 
after the heaviest meal of the day, whether this 
comes at noon or in the evening, it is better to 
stretch the time to half or three quarters of an 
hour. If you try to work or play hard right after 
a hearty meal, you will be drawing away to your 
brain or to your muscles, the blood that the 
stomach is trying to get for the digesting and 
melting of your food. I suppose that you have 
all found this out for yourselves; for, if you run 
and play too hard right after dinner, you are 
very soon out of breath, and if you keep up the 
exercise, you are quite likely to have an attack of 
indigestion or stomach ache. If you sit down to 
study directly after a meal, you soon feel heavy 
and lazy, and what you read does n't seem clear 
to you, and in a little while you probably have 



16* A PLEASANT EVENING 

a headache and an unpleasant taste in your 
mouth. If you try to do two important things 
like digestion and hard work with your brain or 
the muscles of your arms and legs at the same 
time, you will be very likely to do both of them 
badly. 

Even if you have studying to do at night, it 
will be much better for you to spend half an hour 
or an hour in laughing and chatting, or in reading 
some good story, or in playing some of the many 
pleasant parlor games that rest you instead of 
tiring you, before you settle down to your books. 
You will find that when you do start to work, 
you get your lessons much more quickly and 
easily than if you had started in after eating. 

Perhaps your sister is just waiting to show 
you that girls can play checkers better than boys 
can — " So there ! " Or some of your friends have 
come in for a game of dominoes or authors or 
snap or parcheesi or stage coach or pussy- 
wants-a-corner, or to try that new song you 
learned last week; and you will be surprised how 
quickly the time flies away and bedtime or study 
hour comes. 

Most evenings, however, you will probably 
get out your favorite magazine, or that good 
story that you are reading, and you will all sit 



A PLEASANT EVENING 163 

around the big lamp on the center table and go 
off on adventures to the uttermost parts of the 
earth, with the best and most lasting friends 
that you will ever make — friends who will never 
grow tired of you and will always come when 
you want them and are always willing to talk 
or play — the people that live in books. Be sure 
to pick out the best of them for your chums — 
the bravest and the kindest and the most cour- 
teous, and the cleanest and the most honorable. 
You have the whole world to choose from; and 
it is never worth your while to get acquainted 
with cheap, badly behaved, second-rate people 
when you can have your pick of the best. Your 
mother and your father and your teacher will 
help you to choose, and you will soon find that 
what they call "good literature' ' is good stories, 
and about the right sort of men and women 
and boys and girls — the kind that you would 
like to know, and that you would want to be 
like. Once try it, and you find that you like that 
kind of reading better than you do the cheap, 
slangy, trashy stuff, just as you like, and never 
get tired of, good bread and butter and roast beef 
and apples and milk and cream and pudding and 
pie. Good sound stories of home life and adven- 
ture and travel are just as important in making 



164 A PLEASANT EVENING 

your minds wholesome and happy as these good 
foods are in keeping your bodies strong and 
healthy. 

Be sure that the paper of the books and maga- 
zines you read is white and not glossy, and is 
fairly thick and firm ; for this makes them much 
easier to read and strains your eyes less. See, 
too, that the type is large and clear; for small, 
close type and yellow or shiny paper are very 
hard on the eyes. 

Be sure, of course, when you sit down to read 
not to sit with your face to the lamp and your 
head bending forward; but settle yourself in a 
comfortable chair with your back to the light, 
and hold your book so that you can keep your 
chin up and your head erect while you read. You 
can breathe better, and read better, and enjoy 
what you read better in this position than in any 
other. 

Even if you have sums or writing to do, it is 
better to sit with your back, or at least your left 
side, toward the light; and often you will find it 
a great help to sit down with your back to the 
light in a large easy chair and do your writing 
on a big, thin book, or light piece of board, on a 
cushion on your knee. 

In winter, you will find that for the first half 



A PLEASANT EVENING 



165 



hour or so that you are reading after supper, you 
will want to keep fairly near the fire, because the 
blood is being drawn in from your skin to your 
stomach for purposes of digestion; but be sure 
to see that at least one, and better two, windows 




A COZY NOOK WHEN EVENING COMES 

in the room are open six inches or so at the top, 
so that there is plenty of fresh air pouring into 
the room. 

When study hour comes, take up your books 
and go briskly to work, forgetting that there is 
anything else in the world, and you will be aston- 
ished how quickly you will learn your lessons. 
Besides, you will be learning one of the most 
valuable lessons in life — to do with your might 
whatever your hands, or minds, find to do. 



GOOD NIGHT 

I. GETTING READY FOR BED 

By and by the clock strikes eight or nine, and 
your mother says, " Children, time to go to bed ! " 

Sometimes you will have just come to the 
interesting point in the story, and would give 
anything to go on and finish it. But often you 
will be just nodding over your book, or begin- 
ning to wonder why the story is not quite so 
interesting as it was, or why the lines seem to be 
running into one another, and the book inclined 
to swing up and bump your nose. 

If you have had a lively, busy, happy day, 
you are quite sleepy enough to be ready for bed 
— that is, if you could drop into it with all your 
clothes on, without all the bother and fuss of 
undressing. So you pull yourself together bravely 
and answer, "All right, mother/ ' and say "Good 
night' ' to everybody, and upstairs you go. 

Of course, you must take off your clothes, 
because you would find them most uncomfort- 
able to sleep in. Besides, the little pores all over 
your skin have been pouring out perspiration all 
day long; and a great deal of this has been 



J 



GETTING READY FOR BED 167 

caught by your clothes, just as it is caught by 
the bedclothes while you sleep. 

So it is a good thing to take off your clothes, 
and let your skin be well aired and cooled. Don't 
leave your clothes all in a heap on the floor just 
where you happen to shed them, but hang them 
up over the back of a chair or on pegs, so that 
the air can blow through them all night long and 
6weeten and clean and dry them. Clothes that 
are worn continuously become sour with per- 
spiration, and for this same reason your mother 
gives you regularly, once or twice a week, clean 
underwear and clean shirts or dresses. 

After you have undressed for bed, wash your 
face and neck and hands ; and if you have a nice 
warm room or bathroom, take a quick splash, or 
sponge bath, all over, before you put on your 
nightgown. This will wash away from your skin 
everything that the perspiration has been leaving 
on it all day long, as well as any dust, or dirt, 
that may have got on it during the day. 

If the room is not warm enough for you to do 
this, it is a good thing for you to strip to your 
waist and then to swing your arms about, much 
as you did in the morning, only not quite so long, 
and to rub your arms and neck and shoulders 
all over with your hands. This gives them an 



168 GOOD NIGHT 

air bath, and rubs off any of the little scales of 
skin that may be ready to be shed, and gives 
you a sort of dry wash, which is next best to a 
wet one. 

Then, when you have put on your nightdress, 
give your hair a thorough brushing. This is the 
best time of the day to do it. Dust, smoke, soot, 
and germs have been blowing into your hair all 
day long, and a thoroughly good brushing will 
not only get these out of it before they have had 
time to work their way in and lodge on the scalp, 
but will keep the hair bright and healthy. 

Before you get into bed, give your nails a 
quick scrub with a nail brush and hot water and 
soap, and go over them with a blunt-^omted nail 
cleaner, cleaning out any dirt that may be under 
their edges, and rounding off any ragged or 
broken points with the file. Once a week or so, 
when you take your hot bath, it is a good thing 
to go over your toe nails in the same way, trim- 
ming them and cleaning them. Remember, 
however, not to round off your toe nails at the 
corners, but to leave them square, as in this way 
you will prevent them from ingrowing under the 
pressure of your shoes. 

There is one thing that you should be very 
sure of before you get into bed, and that is that 



GETTING READY FOR BED 169 

your teeth are as clean as it is possible for you 
to make them. If you attended to this also 
directly after supper, so much the better; for 
just as it is important to clean the dishes and 
knives and forks that you have been using, so it 
is important to thoroughly clean the ivory 
knives and forks that grow in your mouth. Talk 
about being "born with a silver spoon in your 
mouth"! You were born with something much 
prettier and far more valuable. 

Even though your teeth make a firm and even 
line in front and on their cutting edges, yet there 
are many little gaps and spaces between their 
roots, where bits of food can stick. If these scraps 
of food are not thoroughly and carefully removed 
after each meal, the warmth and moisture in the 
mouth makes them begin to decay. The acids 
from this decay will be likely not only to upset 
your stomach and digestion, but to act upon the 
glassy coating of your teeth. After a little while, 
spots will begin to form on the surface of your 
teeth; they will lose their bright, shiny, pearly 
look; the acids will eat further into the teeth, 
and very soon there will be holes, or cavities. 

Though your teeth are very hard and glassy 
looking on the surface, they are much softer and 
chalkier inside; this glassy coating covers only 



170 



GOOD NIGHT 




the crown , or free part, of the tooth, which you 
can see. It leaves the softer inside part of the 
tooth bare just at the edge of the gums, and par- 
ticularly between the 
roots of the teeth, 
where little scraps of 
food lodge and decay. 
When the acids that 
are formed by the 
decaying food have 
eaten away a good 
deal of the inside of 
the tooth, the hard, 
shiny surface is left 
just like a thin shell; 
and one day you hap- 
pen to bite down upon a piece of bone in your 
food, or try to crack a nut with your teeth, and 
" crack 7 ' goes this brittle shell of your hollow 
tooth. 

Right in the middle of each tooth is a tiny 
hollow, or cavity, filled with a soft, living pulp 
containing one or two very sensitive nerves ; and 
when the decay has eaten into the tooth far 
enough to reach this nerve pulp, it makes it ache, 
and then you have toothache. 
The one and only thing that is necessary in 



HEALTHY GUMS MEAN HEALTHY 
TEETH 

If the gums are not kept clean and healthy, 
the second teeth that are getting ready to 
push out the first teeth will not come in 
strong and good, nor will good teeth remain 
good. This picture shows how the teeth 
grow. Notice the gaps between the teeth, 
where food may lodge. 



GETTING READY FOR BED 171 

order to avoid all this decay and breaking away 
of your teeth, and throbbing toothache, is to 
keep the surface of your teeth, and particularly 
the sides where they are next one another, clean 
and smooth and unbroken. And all that is 
needed to keep your teeth perfectly clean and 
smooth is to use your toothbrush thoroughly 
after every meal and at bedtime; and then, if 
there are any little scraps of food between the 
teeth that have not been brushed away, to pick 
them out gently with a quill toothpick, or take 
a piece of silk or linen thread, push it up between 
the teeth, and gently saw backward and forward 
until you have cleaned out the space between 
the roots. You should take at least three to five 
minutes after every meal and before you go to 
bed at night to brush your teeth ; and you should 
brush not only your teeth, but the whole surface 
of your gums close up to where they join the lips. 
It is almost as important to keep your gums 
pink and hard and healthy as it is to keep your 
teeth clean; and the same thorough brushing 
will do both. If the gums are perfectly healthy, 
they will come well down over the roots of the 
teeth, and keep them safely covered right down 
to where the glassy outer coating begins, and so 
leave no gap where the acids of decay can attack 



172 GOOD NIGHT 

the teeth. Be sure to brush your teeth, not 
merely straight backward and forward, but up 
and down and round and round as well, both to 
clean out thoroughly all the grooves and open- 
ings between them and to brush the gums well 
down over the teeth. 

It may seem strange, but one of the best ways 
to keep your teeth from growing crooked and 
irregular is to keep your nose clear and healthy, 
so that you can breathe through it freely at all 
times, both day and night. Crooked jaws and 
irregular teeth are more often caused by mouth 
breathing than by any other one thing. 

You can see why it is best to be careful not to 
get grit or dirt or bits of bone in your food, and 
not to crack nuts or hard candy with your teeth. 
If you do, you may crack or scratch the delicate 
glassy coating of your teeth. But, on the other 
hand, it is a good thing to give the teeth plenty 
to do, and particularly to eat the crusts of bread, 
and some of the tougher parts of meat, and 
parched corn or other grains, and to eat celery, 
apples, and other foods that take a great deal of 
chewing. The teeth are like everything else in 
the body — they need plenty of vigorous work 
in order to keep them healthy. 

Be very careful, though, to keep out of your 



THE LAND OF NOD 173 

mouth anything that might possibly crack or 
scratch the glassy coating, such as pins, pennies, 
pieces of wire, or slate pencils. It is best not even 
to try to bite off threads or pieces of string. 
There is, of course, another reason for not putting 
pencils and pennies and such things into your 
mouth: they may have dirt, or germs, on them 
and infect you with disease or at least upset your 
digestion. 

II. THE LAND OF NOD 

Now you are all ready for bed ; and the white 
pillow and the nice, clean sheets and the warm 
blankets look very good to you, and you are 
ready to go to the "Land of Nod." 

You need not be afraid of the cold at night. 
Open your bedroom windows. Have plenty of 
light-weight, warm covers; then the cold breezes 
won't hurt you, but will make you strong. Just 
think how many hours you are in bed, — nearly 
half of your life, — and you need fresh, moving 
air all the time. Be sure to open your windows 
from the top as well as from the bottom. You 
know why : your breath is warm so that it floats 
and rises like smoke ; and if you open the window 
only at the bottom, this bad air, which rises to 
the top of the room, can't get out. It is best to 



174 GOOD NIGHT 

have windows on two sides of a bedroom, so that 
the air can be kept moving through it all night 
long. If you don't breathe fresh air while you 
sleep, you will feel dull and stupid in the morning 
and perhaps have a headache. 

So run your window shades right up to the 
top and throw your curtains, or shutters, back, 
as well as open the windows. If you don't, the 
fresh air cannot blow through the room properly. 
Even if this does let more light or noise into the 
room, this is of no importance whatever compared 
with abundance of fresh air. If you have played 
long enough out of doors in the daytime and have 
eaten a good supper and not stayed up too late, 
you will sleep soundly without being bothered 
at all by either lights or noises coming in through 
the windows. And no matter how cold or how 
light it is, don't put your head under the bed- 
clothes. Why? 

It is best for you to close your mouth while 
you are going to sleep, and breathe through your 
nose, so that the air will be properly purified and 
warmed before it reaches your lungs. If you can't 
do this, your mother can perhaps give you some- 
thing to wash out your nose, so that you can 
breathe freely. If that does not help, you had 
better see a doctor, and he will find some way 



THE LAND OF NOD 175 

to clear your head so that you can use your nose 
comfortably. 

Suppose you take a pencil and paper and 
write down all you did yesterday. Was n't it 
enough to make you tired and sleepy and want 
a chance to rest? Even while you sleep, your 
heart keeps beating, and you don't stop breath- 
ing, of course. But your muscles are quiet, and 
your food tube rests. Your brain rests, too, — - 
better in sleep than at any other time, — so that 
when morning comes you are as " lively as a 
cricket' ' and quite ready for the new day. 

Yet even in sleep your brain does not stop 
working entirely, but goes on receiving messages 
from the stomach and the skin and the memory, 
and mixing them up together in the strangest 
fashion, so that you dream, as you say. You 
ought not to dream very much if you are per- 
fectly well; but as long as your dreams are 
pleasant or amusing, you need not pay any atten- 
tion to them e But if you have had bad dreams, or 
you dream so hard all night long that you don't 
feel rested in the morning, then yen had better 
speak to your mother about it, and let her see 
what is the matter with your digestion or your 
nerves, or take you to a doctor. Bad dreams are 
always a sign of ill health and are a very disagree- 



176 GOOD NIGHT 

able thing, from which there is no need that you 
should suffer any more than from headache or 
indigestion or colic. Dreams, of course, do not 
mean or foretell anything whatever, except simply 
how bad, or good, the state of your digestion and 
your nerves is. 

Now, how much time should you spend in bed? 
Well, I think at your age nearly half the time. 
Ten or eleven hours of sleep make you ready for 
all the hours of work and play, and you don't 
become cross and tired half so easily if you have 
plenty of sleep. Though you are lying so quietly, 
you are not by any means wasting your time, 
for you probably are growing faster when you 
are asleep than when awake. Babies, who are 
growing very fast, you know, sleep nearly all the 
time. 

So after you have opened all the windows 
wide, put out the light and jump into bed and lie 
down for a good night's rest without thinking 
about anything except how comfortable the bed 
feels when you are tired. 



FORMING GOOD HABITS 

It is very easy to read about the proper way to 
live in order to be most healthy and happy. You 
have probably found that this is true in your 
reading of this little book. But it is sometimes 
quite a different matter to do what is best for 
your health and happiness. You may read and 
even understand everything that you have read, 
yet if you don't put it into practice it will do you 
little good. It is really best to make the good 
things that we learn a part of our life and to do 
them every time we get a chance. What is it that 
makes the life of the savages in the African jungle 
so different from our life? The reason is that the 
civilized nations of the earth are learning new 
and important facts about living and have been 
doing so for hundreds of years and teaching these 
new facts to the children, while the savage has 
been content to remain just as ignorant as his 
ancestors, and to live in just the same squalid 
fashion. Some of the right ways of living, about 
which you have learned in this book, were not 
taught to your father and mother, because no 



178 FORMING GOOD HABITS 

one knew about the truth in regard to such things- 
when your parents went to school. 

When you think of these matters, you will 
realize that even if no one makes you do what we 
have talked about, you should try very hard to 
do it for your own good. It is much easier for you 
now to become accustomed to doing what is best 
than it will be when you are older and more 
settled in your habits. One who learns to speak 
a foreign language after he has grown up can. 
hardly ever learn to speak it perfectly. People 
who live in the country where the language is 
spoken will be able to detect a difference between 
his speech and their own. It is just the same with 
other habits as it is with the habits of speech* 
Learn proper habits of life now and you will have 
very little trouble in keeping them up when you 
are older. 

Let us see what are the most important things 
that we have learned together. 

We have found out that as soon as we get up 
in the morning, the bedclothes should be thrown 
back over the foot of the bed and left to air, and 
that the room where we have slept should have 
plenty of air and sunlight during the day. Then 
a cool and quick bath followed by a brisk rub 
makes us feel better and more wide-awake. Just 



FORMING GOOD HABITS 179 

before breakfast, and, in fact, before any meal or 
before we touch food of any sort, it is of the 
greatest importance that we wash our hands 
thoroughly with soap and water, and that we 
see that our nails are clean and well-trimmed. 

We are careful to take time for a nourishing 
breakfast, which ought to be plentiful enough to 
give us a satisfied feeling that will last until a 
little while before our next meal. Right after 
breakfast the teeth are to be well brushed and 
this is also a good time to go to the toilet. 

Before leaving the house we make sure that 
we have the right kind of clothing, and if it is 
wet, we must not forget our rubbers. The best 
way to start away from home is with a romp or 
frolic which will start the heart pumping more 
strongly, but which will not be long enough or 
hard enough to tire us. 

When we read, it is best for the light to come 
over our shoulder, and it should not be strong 
enough to " glare." It is well to let the eyes rest 
a moment after we have used them steadily for 
several minutes. 

It is dangerous to drink water fro'm a brook or 
spring which we are not sure is pure, or to drink 
from a cup or. dipper that others have used. 
(You now know how to make your own drinking 



180 FORMING GOOD HABITS 

cup.) It is also better not to touch our mouth 
or nose with our hands; for our hands may have 
touched something which is covered with disease 
germs. For the same reason it is a bad habit to 
put into our mouths pencils or erasers or other 
articles which have been handled by others, or 
to eat candy or apples which others have bitten, 
or to use a towel which others have used. 

If we find that we do not breathe easily through 
the nose, we should go to a nose and throat doc- 
tor to see if there is n't some growth which he can 
remove. If we let it go without treatment, our 
work is apt to be poorer, and our faces are apt to 
have a dull, stupid look. We ought to go to a 
dentist, even if there is just the tiniest cavity in 
one of our teeth, and it is best to have the dentist 
examine our teeth once or twice a year, even if 
we think that there are no cavities. He may be 
able to find some and he will keep the teeth clean 
and thus prevent decay of the teeth. 

If we have a fever or a bad cold or a rash, we 
take care not to go among other people until we 
are sure that it is something that cannot be 
"caught," and it is usually necessary to see a 
doctor before we can be certain about it. We 
want to keep our friends from being sick, as well 
as ourselves. 



FORMING GOOD HABITS 181 

We have also learned some of the things that 
should be done if an accident occurs, such as a 
burn or a cut, or if some one is poisoned or nearly 
drowned. Of course it is n't very easy to form a 
habit about anything that occurs so seldom as an 
accident. In some places, however, among some 
of the miners of our country, for instance, people 
do practically the same thing by having " first- 
aid' ' drills. The men form teams which practice 
treating make-believe cases of accident, and once 
in a while have a contest to see which team is the 
quickest and best. It is marvelous how quickly 
these men, who have practiced doing what ought 
to be done when there is an accident, can band- 
age a wound, or dress a burn, or revive a drown- 
ing man. The Boy Scouts and Camp Fire Girls 
are also taught .first-aid treatment. Perhaps 
some one who knows about first-aid can help you 
children to start some first-aid teams. 

Besides getting plenty of nourishing food, we 
can try all we can to make our meals pleasant, 
so that our nervous systems may not refuse to 
help us digest our food. Even now we don't know 
all that we should like to know about the working 
of our brain and nerves. But we know enough 
to be sure that it is best not to worry and to try 
to look on the bright side of life and to find pleas- 



182 FORMING GOOD HABITS 

ant things, even when everything seems to be 
going wrong. 

Before we go to bed, or perhaps just after sup- 
per, we give our teeth another good brushing, in 
order to give the germs no chance to harm our 
teeth while we are asleep. Just before we jump 
into bed for a restful sleep of ten hours or more, 
we should make certain that our windows are 
open to let in plenty of fresh air to ventilate our 
lungs. 

There are many other good habits that we 
should learn, but I think that you will do a great 
deal toward making yourselves healthy and 
keeping well, if you form the habit of doing what 
we have mentioned in this chapter. Just try to 
do as many of these things as you can for a week* 
Then, at the end of the week, read the chapter 
again, and see if there is anything that you have 
been forgetting. There will probably be several 
things that you have not remembered. But you 
can then be sure to do them during the week 
that follows, as well as all that you did not forget. 
It will not be many weeks before you can do 
everything very easily, and there will soon be so 
much habit in it all that you will not have to 
think much about what you are doing. Try it 
and see! 



SETTING-UP EXERCISES 1 



BY 



GEORGE J. FISHER, M.D. 

Secretary, Physical Department International Committee 
Young Men's Christian Association 




Exercise i 

Position : Heels together, arms down 
rand at sides, palms in. 

Movement: Swing arms sideways, 
upward to vertical, and return. 




Exercise 2 
Same as Exercise 1, except that 
arms are swung forward, upward to 
vertical. 



SETTING-UP EXERCISES 



1 From the Official Handbook for Boys, Boy Scouts of America. 
Used by special permission 



1 84 



SETTING-UP EXERCISES 




Exercise 3 Exercise 4 

Position: Arms extended to Position: Arms at side, horizontal, back 

side horizontal. slightly arched. 

Movement: Swing forward and Movement: Circle arms backward. 

return. 

(Emphasis upon backward 

movement.) 




Exercise 5 

Position: Forearms flexed at side 
of chest. 

Movement: Thrust arms forward 
and return. 




ftsafl 



Exercise 6 

Position : Arms at front, horizontal, 
forearms flexed, ringers on shoulders. 

Movement: Swing backward to 
side, horizontal in position. 



SETTING-UP EXERCISES 



SETTING-UP EXERCISES 



185 




& 



Exercise 7 
Position : Same as 
Exercise 6. 

Movement : Swing 
downward, forward, 
bringing arms beyond 
sides of body. Rise 
on toes with end of 
backward swing. 





Exercise 8a 
Position : Arms at 
vertical, thumbs 
locked, head fixed 
between arms. 




Exercise 



Movement : Bend 
forward as far as pos- 
sible, without bend- 
ing knees, and return. 



\ 



£^ 



Exercise ga 
Position: Arms at vertical. 
Repeat exercise 8b. 




Movement : Arm circles, downward, 
inward, across chest. Reverse the 
movement. 



SETTING-UP EXERCISES 



1 86 



SETTING-UP EXERCISES 




Exercise io 
Position: Hands on 

hips. 

Movement: Forward 

bend. 




Exercise ii 
Position : Same as 
Exercise io. 

Movement : Back- 
ward bend. 




>*<•> 
%*/••} 



Exercise 12 
Position: Same as 
Exercise 10. 

Movement : Side- 
ward bend, right and 
left. 










Exercise 13 
Position: Same as 

Exercise 10. 

Movement : Rotate 

body at waist. 




Exercise 14 
Position: Same as 

Exercise 10. 
Movement : Raise 

high on toes. 
(Hold shoulders 

back firmly.) 

SETTING-UP EXERCISES 




Exercise 15 
Position: Same a.2. 

Exercise 10. 

Movement : Full 

knee bend. 



QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES 

Good Morning 

I. Waking Up. i. If you were choosing a bedroom, on which side of 
the house — facing which direction — would you choose it, and why? 

2. How does the air "down cellar" feel? 3. Why do people often keep 
fresh fruit and vegetables there? 4. What are bacteria? 5. How can we 
prevent bacteria that cause disease from growing in our houses? 6. How 
would you know, without being told, that sunshine is good for you? 7. 
What does this book mean by saying that we are made of sunshine? 

II. A Good Start, i. When you jump out of bed in the morning, 
what do you do with the bedclothes? Why? 2. Stand in front of the 
class and show them the exercises that are good to do every morning. 

3. Tell the class why they are good. 4. Do them every morning for a 
week, and then tell the class how you feel about keeping them up. 

III. Bathing and Brushing, i. If you grow very warm exercising, 
what change do you notice in your skin? What makes it turn pink? 
Where does the moisture come from? 2. What kind of bathing do you 
like best? 3. What do we wash off besides perspiration and dust? 4. If 
a scab forms over a scratch or cut in your skin, what should you do to it? 
Why? When will the scab come off of itself? 5. What makes the skin 
freckle or tan? 6. Could your face stand the same hard rubbing as your 
hands? Why not? 7. How do you take care of your hair? 8. What 
other parts of the skin can you tell about? 9. Look at your nails; which 
of the "tools" on p. 17 do they need now? 10. How, and when, do you 
care for your teeth? Why is this brushing very necessary? 11. Why 
must our clothes be washed every week? Name each of your Five Senses. 
12. What can your skin tell you that your eyes and ears cannot? 13. Do 
you know of any trade or occupation in which it is necessary to train one's 
sense of touch? Tell about it. 14. What are the blind children in the 
picture doing? (Their alphabet does not look like yours, for the letters 
are represented by groups of raised dots or dashes or curves, which are 
more easily and quickly felt.) 15. What must you do besides washing and 
brushing to keep your skin in good order and looking well? 

Breakfast 

1. Why do we need to eat? 2. Do you like the breakfast suggested 
here? Why do you need so much? 3. Which of these foods come from 
animals? Which from plants? Which of them are the best "to grow 



ii QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES 

on"? 4. How much milk is there in the two bottles in the picture on 
p. 23? What is the difference between milk and cream? Why is it bet- 
ter to buy bottled milk than milk dipped out of a can? 5. Suppose that 
you are going to get the breakfast in this house; how will you use some 
of the milk in preparing it? How will you take care of what is left? 

6. Why is milk much better for you than coffee or tea? Where does the 
food strength in the milk come from? 7. Suppose that you have just 
bitten off a mouthful of food; what is the story of this mouthful be- 
fore it is taken into your blood? Where does most of it enter the blood? 
What becomes of the part that the blood cannot use? Why is it very 
necessary that this be disposed of regularly? 

Going to School 

I. Getting Ready, i. How is it best to dress in winter? Why? 
(If this is hard to understand, think which would cool faster — hot soup 
in a deep cup or the same soup poured out into a plate? In which dish 
would the soup have the larger surface from which to let off the heat? 
You may now weigh only half as much as you will when you are fully 
grown, but you already have much more than half as much size or sur- 
face.) 2. What quality should all clothing material have, and why? 

II. An Early Romp. i. Which makes you more tired, to walk slowly, 
just " lagging along," for about twenty minutes, or to walk briskly for 
the same time? Why? 2. How do you make your muscles strong? What 
is your heart made of? How can you make your heart strong? 3. Why 
do you need a heart? 4. What is your pulse? Where can you easily feel 
a pulse? Count the pulse of someone else for half a minute by a watch. 
Do this accurately. How many beats would there be in a minute? Try 
this with different classmates. 5. What do we call the tubes through 
which the blood flows away from the heart? The tubes through which 
it flows back to the heart? 6. What is happening to the blood on its 
"round trip"? Where does it get the liquid food that it delivers to the 
muscles? Why must the blood be carried away from the muscles? 

III. Fresh Air — Why We Need It. i. If you were asked how we 
can tell that air is everywhere, what could you say? 2. What do we call 
a thin light substance like air? 3. What proof have we that the body 
needs it? How does it get around to the different parts of the body? 

4. What is the body — its muscle, bone, skin, and all — made up of? 
How do these cells use the air? Why do you need to breathe so often? 

5. In the candle experiment, is all the air under the glass used up? What 
is used up? How can we compare a person in a closed room to the burn- 
ing candle under the glass? 6. What is the gas that we breathe out? 

7. In what three ways does the body " clean house " ? 

IV. Fresh Air — How We Breathe It. i. Where are your lungs? 
2. Draw a picture of the ribs. 3. In what position are they when the 



QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES Hi 

lungs are filled with air ? In what position is the diaphragm then? 
4. What are the lungs giving off in the breath besides carbon dioxid ? How 
can you prove this? 5. How can you prove that the gas in your breath 
is not like the gas in the fresh air around you? 6. Why does a room with 
people in it grow very warm if the doors and windows are kept closed? 

7. How does Nature keep the outdoor air clean? What makes the winds? 

8. Are you careful to keep your breath as clean as possible? How? 
How do you help keep the air in your house clean? 

In School 

I. Bringing the Fresh Air In. i. What do we mean by fresh air? 
Why must the air we breathe have oxygen in it? 2. Is the air in the room 
now the best you can have in it? How is the air moving? 3. Is there 
always the same amount of air in the room? Then, if there is more fresh 
air, there must be — bad air? If there is less fresh air, there must be — 
bad air? What is the quickest way to let the bad air out and the fresh 
air in? Why are you given recess? 4. What is a draft? Are drafts dan- 
gerous? 5. Will night air hurt you? What air can you have in the house 
at night except night air? 

II. Hearing and Listening, i. Have you ever slept in a house close 
to a railway? What did you notice whenever a heavy train went by? 
What made the bed tremble? 2. If you have stood very near a moving 
train, how did your ears feel? Why? 3. How far do sound waves travel 
after they enter the ear? Could a person be deaf who had two perfect 
ears? Where would the trouble be? 4 . Draw a picture to show the parts 
of your left ear, and name each part. 5. How do you take care of your 
ears? 6. Comment on doing each of these things: — firing a bean shooter 
at anyone; throwing gravel or sand; firing off a cap or torpedo close to 
some one's head; boxing a person on the ear; running a nail cleaner or 
pencil point into your ear; putting on the baby's cap so that the ears are 
folded forward; asking your teacher to repeat her question. 7. Have you 
tried to train your ears? How? — and why? 8. Find out about some 
business, or occupation, in which it is necessary to have very keen hear- 
ing, and write a little story about it. 

III. Seeing and Reading, i. Are you seated now in the best way 
for reading or not? Why? 2. Why is it well to look up often, as you 
read? 3. How far from your eyes ought you to be able to hold this book to 
read it easily? If you cannot, what should you do? 4. Draw a picture 
of someone's eye, as you see it, naming the parts. 5. Draw a picture of 
your eye as it would look if you could see the eyeball from the left side, 
and name the parts. 6. What takes the sight message to the brain? 
7. How does the nerve of the eye (the optic nerve^ get its messages? 
What, then, is light? If the light waves enter the ear, can they make 
you hear? Why not? 8. When a baby is born, what care should be taken 



iv QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES 

of its eyes immediately, and why? 9. Have you ever played any games 
in which the sharpest eyes won? What were they? 10. Write a little 
story about the picture on p. 59. 

IV. A Drink of Water, i. Why do we want to drink water? How 
would you know that your body must have a great deal of liquid in it? 
2. Do you know where the water you drink at school comes from? If 
you don't, try to find out; and find out also just how it is brought to the 
school and why it flows up to the faucets. 3. If you get drinking water 
from a well, either at home or at school, tell where this well is — how 
near the house or the out-buildings. Do you think that any waste from 
these buildings could drain into the well? Why? 4. At your sand table 
or from a sandpile in the yard, lay out a farmyard, showing where the 
house, the barn, the chicken yard, and the pig-sty, also the privy vault, 
are. Now locate the well so that it cannot receive drainage from any of 
these places. 5. What is the danger in using drinking water from a 
stream? 6. How could the germs of typhoid fever get into the milk we 
drink? 7. What do we mean by fermented drinks? Name some. What 
is in these drinks that is so very harmful? 

V. Little Cooks, i. Do you bring luncheon to school? What do 
you like to have for your luncheon? Talk about this in class with your 
teacher, and find out what things are best for school luncheons. 2. How 
is your luncheon packed? Why ought it to be neatly done? 3. How 
long do you take for luncheon, or for dinner at home? Is this time enough? 
4. What do you do right after eating? Is this what you ought to do? 
Why? 5. What foods do you know how to cook? Write out the recipe for 
something you have made, showing what you mixed and how you did it; 
and in what, and how long, you cooked it. 6. Give three reasons for 
cooking food. 7. How is fried food so often made indigestible? 8. Are 
sweet foods good or harmful? What does sugar come from? How is it 
made? 9. Write a little story about one of these things: My First Lesson 
in Cooking; Our Taffy Party; How I Kept Flies out of the Kitchen; 
How We Boys Cooked Breakfast (or Supper) ; My Marketing. 

VI. Tasting and Smelling, i. If anyone asked you how a lemon 
tastes, what would you say? What would you say about sugar? Salt? 
Pepper? Pickles? Strawberries? Cheese? Onions? Radishes? How 
did you learn about each of these? 2. What does your tongue do be- 
sides receiving tastes? Note in the picture (p. 86) how strongly your 
tongue is rooted; point to the tip of it in the picture. 3. How does your 
nose help your throat and your lungs? How else may it help you? 
4. Draw a picture to show how air reaches the lungs. 5. What are adenoids? 
How may you know if you have adenoids? If you have, what ought you 
to do? Why? 6. Where do the men who want to smoke in the open trolley 
car have to sit? Why? If children breathe tobacco smoke, what effect will 
it have on them? Why is smoking a foolish habit? How is it often harmful? 



QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES v 

VII. Talking and Reciting, i. When you are reciting in class, do 
yeu think how your voice and the words sound to the other people in the 
room? Show the class how you can make your speech sound just as you 
want it to. 2. Give three ways in which you can take care of your throat 
and voice. Put your hand on the place where your voice is made. How 
is it made? 3. On your own picture of the throat, show where those little 
folds of skin are (the picture on p. 86 shows, of course, only the fold of 
skin, or vocal cord, on the right half of the windpipe) . 

VIII. Thinking and Answering, i. With two or three of your 
classmates, play telephone; — one must be " Central " and one "Informa- 
tion" at the central office, and one must receive your message and answer 
it. A number of the other children may join hands to make a long " wire" 
on each side of "Central"; they will repeat the message softly from one 
to another all down their "wire." 2. Now, suppose that you all repre- 
sent the telephone system in the body. Could you act out this "Body- 
Telephone" call: — The eye sees a burning match on the floor, and sends 
the message to its center in the brain; this center consults the memory 
("Information") as to what to do. Memory recalls that burning matches 
are likely to set fire to other things and ought to be put out. So the brain 
sends a message to the muscles of the foot to get to work and stamp out 
the flame. In this play, what will you each call yourselves? 3. Make up 
some other " Body-Telephone" plays. 4. What are some of the messages 
that are being carried by your nerves, that you know nothing about? 
5. Think how many messages a baby stores away before he is ready to 
answer them; what are some of these? Why can he not answer them at 
once? What makes his brain and nerves and muscles grow? How can 
you take the best care of yours? 6. In the picture on p. 96, point to the 
brain; to the spinal cord. How near the surface of your back is your 
spinal cord? What keeps it from being easily injured? 

"Absent To-day?" 

I. Keeping Well. i. Why do our bodies need " housecleaning "? 
How do we get rid of the waste part that is a gas? Of the part that is 
water? What carries the carbon dioxid to the lungs? What carries the 
waste water to the sweat tubes and the kidneys? What other waste is 
there to be gotten rid of? 2. Suppose that you and your chum each have 
an equal chance to take a bad cold from someone else; your chum catches 
it, and you don't. What might be one reason why you don't? Place 
your hand over your liver. How can you keep it in good working order? 
3. What is the bladder? Why is it so very necessary to empty the bladder 
regularly? When you perspire freely, how does that help the kidneys? 

II. Some Foes to Fight, i. You have seen moldy bread? What is 
the mold? What makes it spread? 2. Suppose you take some pieces of 
moldy bread or potato and turn a glass jar or bowl over them. Catch a 
few flies and put them under the glass, and leave them to crawl over the 



vi QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES 

moldy food. After a day, put the flies under another glass with some 
pieces of fresh bread or potato. If you find that the fresh food quickly 
becomes moldy, how will you think that the mold germs came to it? 
(If you keep the jars in a warm place, the germs will grow faster, and you 
won't have so long to wait before you can see the mold.) 3. What other 
kinds of germs do flies carry? How do they carry them? 4. A Board 
of Health caused a liveryman to be fined because he allowed a manure 
pile to remain behind his stable. Why was his act a misdemeanor? 
From what do flies come, and how do they grow? 5. On your way to and 
from school, what have you noticed that could breed or attract flies? 
How could these things hav<* been avoided? 6. The next time you go 
into a butcher shop or grocery store, notice how the things are kept and 
be ready to tell the class what you think about it. 7. In what ways may 
germs be carried, besides by flies? 8. What do we mean by the " Great 
Wliite Plague"? Why is it called this? W T hat are people doing to try to 
cure it? 9. What can you do to help prevent it? 10. Why ought you to 
stay away from other people when you have a cold? What do you need 
most in order to get well? 11. Do you always have your own towel to 
use? Why should you? 12. Write a little story about the picture on p. 112. 

III. Protecting Our Friends, i. Is there a Board of Health in your 
town? If not, what takes its place? See if you can find out some of the 
things that the Board or the Officers have done for the town. 2. What 
do we mean by quarantine? What is the quarantine station in ports where 
passenger steamers land? See if you can find out about any time when 
a city or port was guarding its people against an infectious disease. 
3. Have you been vaccinated? How was it done? Why was it done? How 
do we all know that it is a very wise thing to have done? 4. How can 
you help the Health Officers to keep your town a healthful place? 



Work and Play 



I. Growing Strong, i. When you play out of doors, what do you 
exercise? What do you exercise when you study? How ought you to 
play and study so as to get the most good from each? Why is it good to 
play, and work too, out of doors? 2. What games have you played in the 
last day or two? How did the players divide the muscle exercise of the 
game? Did they divide up the thinking part, too? 3. Why must the 
blood be sent to the muscles? Why must it be carried away again? When 
you feel tired, what is happening in your body? 4. What are muscles 
like? Show how the elastic bands of your legs work when you sit on your 
heels. What makes the muscles at the back of your legs feel thicker? 
5. What bones of your body can you feel? Put your hands on them, as 
you tell what you can about each. 6. Why do we need bones? What do 
we call our whole framework of bones? 7. Have you ever seen anyone 
who had to stay all the time in bed or sit in a wheeled chair? How did 
this person show the lack of exercise? 8. What is the meaning of the 



QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES vii 

picture on p. 129? 9. Choose one of the other pictures in this chapter 
and write a story about it to show how to grow strong. 

II. Accidents, i. When you hear the word accident, what do you 
think of ? What have you to help you to prevent accidents ? If you have 
used your "look-out department" as well as you can, and still the acci- 
dent happens, what will you do then? 2. Show the class how to care 
for a very deep cut. What do we call a medicine that kills disease germs ? 
3. How would you treat a bruise? A burn? Frost-bitten ears? Chil- 
blains ? A bee sting ? 4. If you are told to take some medicine from a 
certain bottle or box, do you always look at the label ? Why is it danger- 
ous not to ? What do you think of having medicines about not labeled or 
poured into old bottles with wrong labels ? 5. If you should happen to 
swallow something poisonous, what ought you to do right away ? 6. Sup- 
pose your clothes or your hair should catch fire; what would you do? 
7. How did you celebrate last Fourth of July? Write a short story about 
the picture on p. 144. 8. With one of your classmates, show how you 
would try to restore a person who had just been saved from drowning. 
How can you try to save yourself if you fall into the water? 

III. The City Beautiful, i. Have you a park near your home? 
When the people leave at the end of the day, how do the lawns and paths 
look? Are there cans in the park to hold the papers and scraps? 2. How 
are the streets in your town cleaned in winter? In summer? 3. How 
do the houses get rid of their waste? 4. If the waste goes into a river, 
is the river water used for drinking? Who decides where the drinking 
water for the town shall come from? 5. Why are drinks containing 
alcohol harmful to take (give four reasons)? What is a narcotic? How 
does drinking alcohol lead to crime? 6. Write down five ways in which 
you can help to keep your town or city beautiful. Five ways in which 
you can help to keep your own home beautiful. 7. Why should every 
city have parks for the children? 



The Evening Meal 

1. Play housekeeping, and order the dinner. 2. Write down a list of 
things for a good supper. 3. Why does Nature give us so many different 
kinds of food? How does she teach us not to eat too much of one kind at 
a time? 4. Write down on the board as many of each of these kinds of 
food as you can: — meats; vegetables; fruits; breads; sweet foods; fish; 
grains; food (not fruit) that does not need cooking; food to drink. 5. How 
do you help to make meal times pleasant ? Make up a story about the 
picture on p. 159, and tell it in class. 

A Pleasant Evening 

1. Just after a meal, what is your stomach doing? How can you help 
your digestion? 2. Have you played any of the games mentioned here? 



viii QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES 

How did you play them? 3. Look at the picture on p. 165; why is this 
a good after-supper corner? How do you sit and hold your book when 
you read in the evening? 4. What parts of your body are you exercising 
and taking care of when you read? Of what use is a healthy, vigorous 
body without a healthy, vigorous mind? How can you keep your mind 
healthy? How can you keep it vigorous? 5. What kind of books do you 
like best to read? Tell the class the names of some good ones. 

Good Night 

I. Getting Ready for Bed. i. At what hour do you go to bed ? 
When do you get up? How many hours' sleep does this give you? Is 
this enough? Why do you need so much sleep ? 2. As you undress, what 
do you do with the clothes you take off? Why should you air your 
clothes every night? How can you take an air bath? Is this as good as 
a wash? 3. How do you care for your hair at night? 4. Do you ever go 
to bed without brushing your teeth? If you do, what happens all night 
long to the food scraps that were left around and between your teeth? 
As these scraps decay, what harm do they do? What makes a tooth 
ache ? 5. Draw a little picture of your own teeth as you see them 
in a looking-glass. Are there any spaces that you can see where food 
might lodge and stay? How can you keep your teeth quite free from 
scraps of food? 6. Why are teeth necessary? How must they grow to- 
make good cutting tools? If they are not straight or sound, what can 
you do about it? 7. Why ought children's first teeth to be thoroughly- 
brushed every day? 

II. The Land of Nod, p. 174. 1. When you are ready for bed, how da 
you fix your windows? Why is it even more necessary to have the air 
blowing through the room at night than in the daytime? 2. How else is 
your body being purified at night? Does your body do any work while 
you are sleeping? What work? 3. What kind of sleep should you have if 
you are perfectly well? 



THE INDUSTRIAL READERS 

By EVA MARCH TAPPAN 

The Farmer and his Friends 
Diggers in the Earth 
Makers of Many Things 
Travelers and Traveling 

These books meet the general school demand for reading 
which gives the child an elementary knowledge of the origin 
of common things. 

The Industrial Readers show the basic value of farming 
and mining, the ways in which the products of the earth are 
made usable, and the importance of means of transportation. 
Through this discussion of " everyday " labor the pupil 
comes to see the interdependence and value of all forms of 
the world's work, and gains valuable knowledge that no other 
set of readers on the market can supply — an understanding 
of the economic and industrial background of his life. 

HOW TO MAKE THE 
GARDEN PAY 

A Manual for the Intensive Cultivation of Small 
Vegetable Gardens 

By EDWARD MORRISON AND 
CHARLES THOMAS BRUES 

This book is written in simple, clear English that children 
in the grammar grades may read easily. The authors have had 
long experience with intensive home gardening and here pre- 
sent the essential information that will enable those unfamiliar 
with gardening to plan for a garden that will utilize the avail- 
able space to the greatest possible advantage, to raise vegeta- 
bles that will prove most serviceable for home use, and to 
make the garden increasingly valuable, year after year. 



HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

1939 



GEOGRAPHICAL READERS 

Home Life Around the World. 

By George A. Mirick. With illustrations from photographs by 
Burton Holmes. 

The Twins Series of Geographical Readers. 

By Lucy Fitch Perkins. Illustrated by the author. 

The Dutch Twins Primer. — The Eskimo Twins. — The 
Dutch Twins. — The Japanese Twins. — The Irish Twins. — - 
The Mexican Twins. — The Belgian Twins. — The French 
Twins. 



Representative Cities of the United States. 

By Caroline W. Hotchkiss. Grades VII and VIII. Illus- 
trated. 

The British Isles. 

By Everett T. Tomlinson. Grades VII and VIII. Illustrated 



INDUSTRIAL READERS 

America at Work. 

By Joseph Husband. 

The Industrial Readers. 

By Eva March Tappan. Illustrated. 

The Farmer and His Friends. — Diggers in the Earth.— 
Makers of Many Things. — Travelers and Traveling. 

HISTORICAL READERS 

The Twins Series of Historical Readers. 

By Lucy Fitch Perkins. Illustrated by the author. 
The Cave Twins. — The Spartan Twins. 

History Readers. 

By Eva March Tappan. Illustrated. 

The Story of the Greek People. — The Story of the Roman 
People. — Old World Hero Stones. — Our European Ances- 
tors. — Letters from Colonial Children. — American Herc> 
Stories. — The Little Book of the War. 



Heroes Every Child Should Know. 

Edited by Hamilton Wright Mabie. Illustrated. 

Dramatized Scenes from American History. 

By Augusta Stevenson. Grades VI-VIII. Illustrated 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

1936 



Books on Patriotic Subjects 

f AM AN AMERICAN 

By Sara Cone Bryant (Mrs. Theodore F. Borst). 

" Americanism," says Mrs. Borst, " needs to be taught as definrlely 
as do geography and arithmetic. The grade teachers are doing 
splendid work for patriotism, with songs and recitations, story- 
telling, and talks on civic virtues. I have tried to give them some- 
thing more definite and coordinated, something that will serve as a 
real textbook on * Being an American.' M 

STORIES Oif PATRIOTISM* 

Edited by Norma H. Deming, and Katharine I. Bemis. 

A series of stirring tales of patriotic deeds by Americans from the 
time of the colonists to the present. There are also stories about 
famous heroes of our Allies in tfce Great War. 

THE PATRIOTIC READER. 

Edited by Katharine I. Bemis, Mathilde E. Holtz, and Henry 
L. Smith. 

The selections cover the history of our country from Colonial 
times. A distinguishing feature is the freshness of material and the 
admirable arrangement. The book gives one a familiarity with 
literature that presents the highest ideals of freedom justice, and: 
liberty. 

THE LITTLE BOOK OF THE FLAG. 

By Eva March Tappan s 

In her own entertaining style, Miss Tappan has written the story 
of Our Flag. She tells children how to behave toward the flag, in a 
fashion that makes such behavior a sacred duty. There are selec- 
tions for Reading and Memorizing, 

A COURSE IN CITIZENSHIP AND PATRIOTISM* 

Edited by E. L. Cabot, F. F„ Andrews, F. E. Coe, M. Hill, and M. 

McSkimmon. 

Good citizenship grows out of love of country and in turn pro- 
motes the spirit of internationalism. This book teaches how to de- 
velop these qualities most effectually. 

AMERICANIZATION AND CITIZENSHIP, 

By Hanson Hart Webster. 

n Well calculated to inculcate love for America, especially among 
the foreign born. This is to be desired at this time more than eve* 
before." — His Eminence, James Cardinal Gibbons. 



HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

1932 



THE TAPPAN-KENDALL HISTORIES 

By EVA MARCH TAPPAN, Ph.D., and CALVIN N. KENDALL, LL.D. 

Book I. American Hero Stories. (For Grades IV-V.) 

By Eva March Tappan. 
A logical introduction to Miss Tappan's A n Elementary History of Our Country, 
The stories are chronologically arranged and appealingly told. 

Book II. An Elementary History of Our Country. {For Grades 
V-VI.) 

By Eva March Tappan. 
A short, connected, and interesting story of the course of events in our history since 
the discovery of America. The narrative is simple, and makes a special appeal through its 
anecdotes of great men. There are numerous stimulating suggestions for written work. 

Book III. Our European Ancestors. {For Grade VI) 

By Eva March Tappan. 
The historical bond of_ union between Europe and America is adequately developed in 
this book. In every detail the book follows the course in history laid down for the sixth 
grade by the Committee of Eight of the American Historical Association. 

Book IV. History of the United States for Grammar Schools. 

{For Grades VI J- VIII.) 

By Reuben Gold Thwaites, LL.D., and Calvin N. Kendall, LL.D. 

There is an adequate and up-to-date account of our social and industrial development, 
and authoritative chapters on the Great War. This history combines accurate scholarship, 
unusual interest, and a most complete and helpful teaching equipment. 



TIMELY BOOKS OF PATRIOTIC INTEREST 

I Am An American. (For Grades V-VI.) 

By Sara Cone Bryant (Mrs. Theodore F. Borst) 

Stories of Patriotism. {For Grades V-VI.) 

Compiled by Norma H. Deming and Katharine I. Bemis 

The Patriotic Reader. {For Grades VII- VIII 'and Junior High Schools.) 
Compiled by K. I. Bemis, M. E. Holtz, and H. L. Smith, Ph.D. 

The Little Book of the Flag. (For Grades VI, VII, VIII) 

By Eva March Tappan 

The Little Book of the War. (For Grades V I I-VI I I and Junior High 
Schools.) By Eva March Tappan 9 

American Ideals. (For High Schools.) 

Edited by Norman Foerster and W. W. Pierson, Jr. 

Liberty, Peace, and Justice. {For High Schools.) 

Speeches and Addresses on Democracy and Patriotism, 1776-1918. River- 
side Literature Series, No. 261 

A Treasury of War Poetry. {For High Schools.) 

British and American Poems of the World War. Edited by George Her- 
bert Clarke. Riverside Literature Series, No. 262 

Americanization and Citizenship. 

Lessons in Community and National Ideals for Ne\y Americans. By 
Hanson Hart Webster 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

1924 



THE WOODS HUTCHINSON 
HEALTH SERIES 

BY WOODS HUTCHINSON, M.D. 

An ideal course in physiology and hygiene for elementary 
schools by a writer of international reputation as physician, 
teacher, and author. 

THE CHILD'S DAY 

For Grades III, IV and V. 

A series of simple, practical, and interesting health-talks, giv- 
ing the various experiences of a typical day, and showing the 
child how he may build a strong, vigorous body and thereby 
immeasurably increase his happiness and usefulness. 

COMMUNITY HYGIENE 

For Grades V and VI. 

With the awakening of the social conscience we now realize 
that health is merely the result of right living, and that its 
principles cannot be taught too early. Community Hygiene 
is a series of plain common-sense talks to fifth and sixth 
grade children on how the home, the school, and the commu- 
nity cooperate to make them strong, healthy, useful citizens. 

A HANDBOOK OF HEALTH 

For Grades VI, VII and VIII. 

An authoritative and fully equipped textbook giving practi- 
cal information regarding the body machinery and the promo- 
tion of health in the individual and in the community. It 
brings to the pupil in simple language the best information 
and advice of the medical profession of to-day. 



HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO 

1921 



